Visiting The Ultimate Home Charging Guru! Full Tour Of State of Charge & Electrical Setup

actually what happens if you plug this in to a non-lightning does it still charge like a like a rivian that's not like looking for CCS it's charging now oh duh gosh why am I said that was a trick question no no I was like he's so like I'm thinking Kyle's thinking Next Level I'm missing what he's trying to say and I look stupid but I'm glad that was the case right I answered my own question here so hello and welcome to another out of spec reviews video you join me with my good friend Tom from state of charge hello everyone and uh I've raided your house I see that I I made rate your charge that's right we made a rate your charge update on Twitter I gave you a terrible score but you offered us pizza so yeah but what can I say only two out of 20 chargers are working here so how can I expect a good score I can't wait to show you guys what Tom has going on in his house because for those of you who don't know about his YouTube channel state of charge it's all about charging and level two home charger reviews not just like I plug it into the car and it works like we do he's like putting it in freezers and dropping things and it's just crazy so of course the crazy mad scientist has a crazy Mad Lab in here I can't wait to show you everything going on we'll take you on a tour of what he's driving what he's got in his house and probably the most complicated electrical setup at any residence in the U.S I think that's been documented before but many electricians that have looked at it and been like I don't know what's going on here but I'll figure it out we had to hire an engineer to come and make it work so we're going to take you on a full tour of the wiring the units Tom's impressions of everything going on in this video so strapping because I'm sure it's going to be a long one but it's going to be super nerdy because we're here hanging out oh Tom we're outside starting with the vehicles all right and you know I've known you from back in the mini e days you were in the BMW Museum we've documented this on the inside EVS podcast which we do every week on Friday if you don't listen maybe you should um it's probably the worst way to start your weekend actually but we do a podcast on electric cars and um you have the mini e you had the BMW active e which was a one series electric one Series so what's cool is BMW's right down the road yeah up in Woodcliff Lake and what got you involved with that briefly because you did a full like Journey thing with my dad on his channel so so really quickly I'd always been interested in alternative fuel vehicles and um I was always a car guy I mean I you know we've talked about this I put a nitrous oxide kit on my Honda CRX twin turbo Mazda RX7 I've always been a car guy but um I was always interested in new technology so one day I just stumbled on this website that said do you want to drive an electric car car and his BMW was taking applications for this pilot program with an all-electric Mini Cooper and I was like well Mini Coopers are cool you know electric cars maybe they're cool I don't know I never driven one so yeah let me apply and I applied and part of the reason why I got accepted was you just mentioned because BMW's headquarters is really close to here and they wanted the participants to be close in case the vehicles needed to go to headquarters like if the dealer couldn't deal with a service problem with it so they did New York metro area and California they have an Oxnard they have the Oxnard so yeah you had to live close to Woodcliff Lake or close to Oxnard and they had 500 people in the program at ran for a couple of years and it's what got me involved with electric vehicles 2009 2010 I drove the electric Mini Cooper I've been hooked ever since well it's funny I actually knew of you back then because I watched at a Mini dealer one of your interviews going and you had the F OPEC license plate which was great and I remember your solar panels on the house because did you have the solar before or the car no so I got the Mini Cooper and I didn't know if this was going to work or not I was like it might not even go up a hill you know like I might be out pushing the thing and uh but but you know as soon as I drove it I was like you know holy you know this is freaking nuts the instant torque so I had it about two months and then I said you know what I this is what I want to do I want to drive electric cars from now and they're so freaking cool so I'm gonna make my own Fuel and I immediately went out and got estimates and put a solar around my house and you went big especially for back then so how many kilowatts is this so it's a nine KW system which was almost unheard of yeah it's it's 39 panels it's as many panels as I can get on the roof that same size system now would be like a 15 kilowatt for the same footprint but I bought the best most efficient panels in 2009 so you know that's was the the cream of the crop back then and take a look you just have random electric car friends pulling up here here's our friend Pete and so uh and crashes into a Stonewall so it'd be great to see Pete in a little bit bit but you went through that you upgraded out of the mini e program which did they Crush all the cars so yet most of them they did but the the crazy thing and I I don't know if I've ever told anybody this so they decommissioned the cars my car was pretty famous they were all labeled they all had side Scuttle numbers and I was mini e number 250 and I had been in a lot of of news articles and so forth so what BMW took my car and put it brought it back to Germany and they took it all apart and years later like nine years later somebody from BMW reached out to me and was like look we've got your side Scuttle we've got your speedometer we've got your clock we've got all the parts of your car we made like desk memorabilia out of the parts from your car because it was so popular do you want it really and I was like yeah you told me this and sent it to me and I have all the stuff here like all the actual parts from my mini e crazy cool so now I mean you've had Teslas you you've had two BMW i3s two model threes you know the activity the I3 and now these two yeah these so why do you have two electric pickup trucks because that's like they they do the same thing so for the most part but they couldn't be any different uh you know so but yeah I've always had a pickup truck and and I always seem to need one I used to own commercial property I was on a restaurant I always needed to pick up truck to haul stuff around and I I used to plow my driveway the driveway super long there as well you know so um I always had a pickup truck and I always said as soon as there's an electric pickup truck I'm gonna buy it but then two trucks launched at once right so I was like well how do I know which one to get so I'll buy both and that is the most Tom thing ever keep the one that I like most right you know so I've had the lightning for like nine months now I've had the rivian for about seven months and uh you know I've I've you know got a pretty good opinion on what um you know what I like about each one they're both health so unique they both have aspects about them that I like better than the other truck but the to really make it just really simple the F-150 is a truck and this guy here is a cool awesome adventure vehicle it's so that's the easiest way to put it that thing is a truck over there and this isn't right this is like a you know a mixture between a Jeep and and uh I don't even know what else but something like an adventure vehicle sure I mean you guys know I own one of these and best vehicle I think I've ever owned I love it but when I need to like do stuff with it I even called you a few weeks ago I'm like Tom yeah I know your friend has a lightning for sale like hook me up yeah it's okay somebody beat you to it like evidently somebody sent the order like 10 minutes before I know I was ready to buy a lightning because I need a bigger bed like I can barely put four wheels and tires in this thing I love the way it tows yeah but I really wanted a lightning also for vehicle to grid and vehicle to load stuff that's cool so um rivian r1t long range best color combo here green with the ocean Coast interior and this is the forest green and then the lightning is a Lariat so pretty high spec one down from the top but then let's just show everyone you put some ko2s on it yep yeah I threw some ko2s on it just um uh just because I like the way they look better more than anything yeah they really do and in the winter you know these are dedicated snow tires but these do perform really well in snow and slush I've had I used to put these on all my trucks yeah they're my by far my favorite like all-terrain tire the ko2s they they're fantastic and what's going on here yeah it looks pretty cool actually yeah so I tinted the light bar and um for those that don't know what it usually looks like on the lightning the lightning has this this is a light bar that goes all the way across and it's like a milky white plastic and it's really messed up it really doesn't look good I mean the the rivian has a light bar but that looks cool this I just it looks like cheap white plastic and I just couldn't take it so I I got this it's Lux headlight tint and I had to shop through at a local shop that does all my window tinting and he nailed it it looks awesome I think I think it really gives the whole front a really good look yeah no totally agree and so sounds like this is you know if you kind of had to choose one sounds like you're leaning in the lightning I mean I always here's my impression I talk to you all the time you're always talking about this you love this truck this you're like never bring it up yeah you know and I do love the rivian but I I tell you there's something I you know what I think it was I knew I was going to love the rivian because I I it's such a cool clean sheet of paper a startup their Tech in that is fantastic yeah um and and Ford took madele F-150 that you know they just used all the existing parts from the the lightning I mean it's all looks exactly the same as a F-150 I mean you know and I I figured it would be a good electric truck but what happened was this has impressed me more than I thought it would and I'm I'm smitting with it more so than the rivian Armature I love the rivian but you know I really prefer driving this yeah just the way this thing cruises down the highway it's so quiet it seemingly at least in the winter time does pretty well I watched your cold weather heater test video yeah this did really it was more efficient than the rivian I mean it didn't have to deal with say vampire drains or whatever but it doesn't matter whatever the drain is the drain is you're still losing energy this if you just leave it parked with the heat on will last more than a day longer than the rivian if they were both charged to 100 so right and the frunk I love this frunk that it opens up you know from below the grill and and you get that that waste access to load stuff I use this frunk all the time and and the weird thing is I hardly ever use the frunk on the rivian and I think it's because I lift stuff up over it you know even like grocery shopping I take the bags and I throw them in the back seat right but when I do grocery shopping with the lightning yeah my way to the to the car I popped the I popped the front and put everything in here so it's kind of it's weird that could hold the groceries just fine but I find myself just using this funk all the time and once this gets the new blue Cruise update with 2.1 it's going to be awesome yeah it sounds like soon you got Pro Power on board like it's awesome rivian sounds like they're going to unlock vehicle to load of the charging support and they they're great with software updates better than Ford with software updates rivian really has supported this truck great absolutely I couldn't agree for what you do with your vehicle which is a work truck because you're always working you got stuff around use this thing all the time work truck I had the back loaded with garbage the other day I'm doing a rip out of a bathroom at my parents house and yeah I had toilets and sinks in the back and everything and it's like I I wouldn't have put them in the rivian first of all it's too small right you know I had that that back just loaded to the to the game well it's an F-150 and it's awesome and we've made a lot of videos on it but what I want to do is show everyone what's going on in here so right now you'll notice the Lucid air is charging we brought this over this is my dad's new car really cool too and I brought it in with single digit percent state of charge and just to kind of get the viewers in the nerdy mood for the moment take a look at this it's actually charging on AC power at about 17 kilowatts into the battery pack so if you take a look right here you'll see that 17 kilowatts right there on the screen and the reason is we are hooked up to Tom's Ford charge station Pro which is an 80 amp charger so it's hooked up to 100 amp circuit we're going to see how this is all wired up it's crazy well cables a little bit warmer than ambient and we are just juicing this thing high power AC charging happening really fast so what I'd love to do is take you all on a tour on what's going on in here have Tom walk us through everything so let's get into that right now so you join us inside the lair Tom you just had your garage redone by garage living a little bit of help there and also cumeric helped a ton with all of your installations yep they did all the electrical work here qumeric's my channel sponsor state of charge sponsor so of course they did all the electrical upgrades we needed and it was significant amount of electrical upgrades that I did not just for the garage here but for the whole system and everything I had to upgrade to a 400 amp service from 150 amp service which is a huge deal I mean you had to put like a Transformer on the street yeah we had to replace the transformer in front of my house which I had a fight with the utility to cover because they wanted to charge me nine grand for a Transformer upgrade but we're able to get them to to cover it great so for those those of you who are curious about all the Nitty Gritty actually I'm going to put the key to the Lucid over here because it keeps it locking it's breaking up and close it does this every time I film with the Lucid but for those of you who are really curious about uh I mean the real nitty-gritty of your Channel with cool graphs and everything of how this is all set up I'll leave a link in the description of Tom's video where he I mean it's a pretty long video and you go through like every little like wire run yeah and and also how we did the floor it's a new poly spark floor it's better than epoxy this this floor system I put in all the uh the the slot walls and everything that I needed to do in the cabinets and everything that came came out really good I'm super super psyched about I needed it I had been doing reviews out here in the garage for a few years and I kind of just fixed up the garage and made it work but now it's like you know this is the state of charge garage now it's you know it's I'm good to go I mean it's so sick in here you got sound up sound absorption on the garage doors on the ceiling because I remember when you first put this in we did a podcast and we were like we're hearing seven time at once everything Sam was bouncing everywhere because everything's hard surfaces so once I did I actually consulted on my friend with my friend Pete yeah because he's a musician about how to arrange the soundproofing and everything you know yeah so it was uh it worked out great now you can tell it's not really an echo in here anymore it's amazing so let's start with this which is you know we gave you a bad uh rate your charge score because all of these are non-functional they're not plugged in yeah only two out of 30 are working so I I can't I'm you know I can't uh I can't argue that a bad score so it's a bit of a graveyard it's a bit of a showcase piece it's something that can change as the channel evolves over the years can you tell us just I guess left to right kind of what every unit is very briefly every unit yeah let's go through each one original juice box right over here at the top Corner old school that is like one of the first smart Chargers ever made really it was made by email it works yeah and yeah um so that was one of the first smart Chargers ever made and also one of the first Chargers that you could plug in before that the all the Chargers were hardwired and there was actually some discussion on whether code was going to allow electric vehicle charging equipment to be plugged in or not so this is going back you know well back when you had your mini e that was before j1772 Oh yeah and so it had its weird own connection an ODU connector I have one in here in the garage actually we should look at that somewhere um and that was hardwired only the charger was hardwired yeah there were no um plugable units available back in 2009 2010 wow everything was hardwired interesting yeah so um so this was one of the first within and why did they choose Nema 1450 over 650 do you remember so um I believe the reason why nlx or not Alex it was Emoto Works chose the 1450 was because Tesla was going to be using it on their mobile equipment and Val who was the owner of e-motorworks was like well if Tess if people are going to be installing Tesla um Outlets to charge their mobile chargers then we want our equipment to be able to plug into the same Outlet how about that so Tesla in a sense led the industry yeah 1450 because some of the earliest units even when when juice box came out a couple other companies came out with chargers most of them had Nema 650 plugs oh interesting but for some reason like that's the reason I think that valve decided to go with the 1450 for the juice box very so yeah so then we have here that's this is a flow things hearty yeah this is a really robust charger um it's uh it's made by flow they're up in Canada it's really good for outdoor use I love the latch it's built so well the only problem that it's super expensive yeah um and that's really 132 yeah and it's only 32 amps so you know which was great nine years ago but okay move on we need minimum 40 amps really should be 48 amp onboard Hardware all the cars yeah all the cars should become a 48 amp onboard charger right and the loose is doing 80 right now which is the maximum which is the maximum I don't think all vehicles are going to have 80 amp onboard Chargers no but the ones that have 100 kilowatt hour plus batteries will but most of the other EVS 48 amp is fine so the charger should be able to minimum 40 amp probably 48 amp and the Hummer AV only has a 48 amp onboard charger which is crazy I know it's being upgraded for this because they did it wasn't ready right fully intended on having an 80 amp onboard charger I'm sure that it wasn't ready yet yeah so which is ridiculous you know how slow it charges I don't know what this is I think they're out of business okay chargeify EV um they were based I think in Texas and they did a review and it wasn't a terrible unit it was they got the Phoenix contact cable which I like it wasn't a bad unit but I don't believe they're in business anymore um here's the autel and this is the autel with remote connector holster ortel makes Chargers both ways with an integrated connector holster and a remote connector holster it's the only charger it's so weird that you could buy it either way why would they why can't you just only you know just get the one with the built in which is right over here right and then just like add the remote thing because this is just a waste of space I I don't know um you know it's it's it's a it's well it tells a Chinese uh company they're based in China right um they might there might be reasons why they do that for Chinese market and then they just brought it here also the same way I don't really know but um that's you can get these are the whole non-commercial yeah commercial ones have a screen this works yeah there's a screen there yeah but it doesn't work on this on the home right another thing that I was like I could see people buying this and thinking it's going to be a screen like they look at the picture and then they get it home and they'll call customer service and be like oh the screen doesn't work well no the screen it's that was us they sent us one for review I'm like you got to send us another one the screen is empowering they're like oh it's the home one like I'm like okay so uh Clipper Creek one of my favorites awesome company yeah um again they make such robust charging equipment Clipper Creek is the OG yeah charging we have you have an original that's a real original one over there on top of uh that that rack over there yep that that that's a that's a Circa 2008 2009 yeah early 60. J1 772 no I converted it oh okay I converted so was that a roadster charger that was either a roadster charger or a mini e-charger because that's what mini the mini Chargers but the active didn't use Clipper Creek no BMW um transitioned to aerovironment that's right at that point yeah yeah so um so Clipper Creek awesome units I still think they're reasonably priced built in America they've just been purchased by end phase oh so does that mean it's kind of I don't know let's see you know I I do notice that there was a price increase after they bought them so they're very expensive units and none of them are smart Chargers they're all dumb Chargers quote unquote which is fine yeah you don't really necessarily need a smart charger they're built really well but when I roll up to a charger out in the middle of nowhere like if we're in Alaska and then I'm like Clipper Creek I'm like we're getting a charge yeah they just work yeah they just work um Emporia Emporia is a new company they just started selling Chargers about a year ago Denver Colorado they Rock yes it's it's actually I'm putting out a video this week where this is my best of 2023 charger wow it's number one rating I absolutely love it and part of the reason why I love it is the price 399 oh really it's a 48 amp charger for 399 wow and you know a lot of my reviews I weigh pricing heavily yes because I I think that's a really important factor people shouldn't have to spend 900 or 800 for for a charger and you know the comparable units say to this that if you want to put this head to head against a unit you'd put it against the juice box um seven uh 689 the charge Point home Flex 749 the wall box 48 amp 6.99 this is just gonna wipe 749 to 689 399 crazy so you know and and it's Wi-Fi it hasn't it comes with an app it keeps all kind of good data and Emporio also sells an ecosystem of Home energy devices yes where you can use this if you buy their view to system yes and you have solar you can make the the employee will only charge your car on excess solar generation yes this is I do that too but yeah it's it's this this this charger rocks it has a horrible connector holster right a horrible connector holster um you can't pull it you can't remove it if you grab the handle yeah it's like you'll have to pull it from up here till the small cable comes out yeah and I think it's pretty ugly yeah it's it doesn't look great but I'm okay with that I I'm I'm functioning first and it's pretty small compared to some other ones but they sell one in black now it looks better oh perfect yeah so you could buy it white or black and actually I'm on my Twitter account at tomalog I'm giving away an Emporia 28 charger in April so 2023. yeah yeah the video will be up for a while follow me on Twitter and in April I'm going to announce where I'm giving away a 48 amp aporia charger um if you just retweet the tweet and follow me on state of charge so Emporia is one to really keep an eye on we're thinking about going with their energy monitoring thing for the Hub tying it in with maybe solar if we end up putting on but I have my eyes on these guys you should they're cutting edge this is a company we know the grizzle e um by United chargers right United Chargers and these things in my impression have never been fancy have just been pretty durable yeah what's your impression so take a look at it and look at the original juice box right well exactly I know this story of course so yeah but they didn't they didn't do anything nefarious right they just basically used the same off-the-shelf metal box that that Emoto Works used to use right you know so um a lot of people think it's a clone it's not all the innards are completely different when I did my review I opened them both up to show people look like no copying here these guys must have been happy about that they just yeah they just use the same really nice solid Nema 4 rated case this is a watertight case you can actually in my video I dunk it in a bucket of water and I and I uh I still charge the car with it it's fine so this is a really good solid good unit for outdoor um very few of the Chargers as you notice have metal enclosures right what this does the phone does cost it's cost um and uh you know the very few of the units do so that's that's a plus for Grizzly this is only a 40 amp unit it's probably my top pick for 40 amps okay so it can be Nema 1450 or hardwire or hardwired yeah or you could order Nema 650 if you want they give you the option yeah cool so you got an amazing E Yeah so this is a creek a Clipper Creek um it's a subdivision of clipper Greek called amazing e um this is a 32 amp portable charger it's a good solid unit it's pricey that's the only problem and it's not dual voltage uh some of these small portable units you can charge at 120 or 240. this is just the 240 volt unit so I'm I'm leaning towards steering people if they want a small portable unit like this to get a dual voltage unit but this had been a favorite of mine for a long time but now that the Dual voltage units are coming yeah it's hard for me not to recommend you getting because you could always opportunity charge on a 120 volt outlet with a dual voltage 120 and it's only 32 at Max which I'm not and you can't do it on that you can't do 40. I'm actually a juice booster guy but we'll talk about that in a little bit this is old school and like commercial this is a commercial blink charger this one you see the the little RFID uh tag there so this you actually it's on the if I plug it in it's on the blink Network so I can you know does that actually show up in the user's map or no no it doesn't okay but if you swipe your blink card yeah and plug in you'll start to be charged well I have to pair with my my Wi-Fi and then you'll start to be charged so I actually have that's what I should have made you do here I know I should have been charging you to charge here especially if you give me a bad rating right so down here juice box nlx juice this is um we look the first charger we we looked at was the juice box up in the corner by made by e-motorworks Yes e-motorworks sold to nlx nlx is the largest public utility in Italy they control like all of Italy's electric grid and they have tons of public charging stations over in Italy yeah so nlx bought the juice box and they immediately redesigned it they got rid of the old hard metal case this is a plastic enclosure but it's still Nema 4 rated so it's a top rated unit and it has an integrated connector holster now um love this unit really good smart charger it's ocpp compliant it comes it can participate in utility demand response programs so this is a favorite for utilities some utilities um if you're going to buy a charger check with your local utility because quite frequently you can get a rebate or even the charger for free if you allow the utility to dial into your your your your house and monitor your charging because they're trying to figure out people's charging patterns and this is one of the favorites for utility use because it's ocpp compliant and it has smart charging features really good unit horrible cable if you live in cold weather if you live in cold weather the cable freezes like a frozen rope if you live in San Diego it doesn't matter but if you're in Minnesota and you're going to install your charger outside this isn't the charger to get right um but for many other reasons it's a great charger Alpha made by United Chargers this is not available I was a beta tester for it it was a unit that was going to come to Market never did so so it's got a screen was the idea yeah touch screen super interactive this was a 40 amp unit it basically has the innards of the grizzly oh okay but but then a whole bunch of other smart charging features because the grizzly has a smart function now the newer one there's a Grizzly smart which is here okay we'll get to that in a second uh so okay that's not that's really for public I've never seen this this is a company called turn on green I believe it's 32 amp unit it might be 40. I think it's a 32 amp unit yeah this is kind of made for um uh public use like apartment complexes yes it's got a lot of uh the ability to Monitor and set up separate billing accounts oh and it even has a look on the side here Kyle the automatic reset button that you always see on public Chargers yeah of course so you know like an e-stop yeah it's it's really meant this is I mean they do sell it for home use but I think it's it's best when it's used in like apartment complexes because you can set up different building accounts and you can have it all kinds of user controls yeah yeah oh sorry this is a 30 yeah that's it no that's an 1x60 okay interesting so I always request the units to come with plugs because for my reviews yeah it would be a bear for me to hard keep hard wiring and ripping them out and everything so um so that's that this is the other version of the autel the one with the integrated connector holster um a couple of things about this Kyle talked about being disappointed that this the screen doesn't work which I was also I was also disappointed in the pictures I thought this was green LED lights I thought it would look cool because you know um I I talk a lot about usability on these Chargers some people are in garages that aren't lit and it benefits them if the connector holster has a light around it the charge Point does which we're going to talk about next it's backlit with an LED so and here's another really cool feature if you notice look the the connector pulls swivels down but now you pull it out and it's out so now you're gonna holster it at you know perpendicular to the ground so it's it's a very easy holster nice and the charge Point home Flex is another one of my top rated units this is a fantastic charger it has the best cold weather cable of any charger we've ever tested I have this at negative 15 degrees for 24 hours and when I pull it out of the freezer it still is nice and bendable so super good unit and good operated units exactly it has a great connector I'm also a connector geek um connector I I don't know if they specifically I don't know if they make anything but I would imagine they designed it in-house expect it and gave it to a company and said this is what I want you to make the only negative I've heard about these are this yes thing and now you told me about this yeah yeah so well it really happens with all of the Chargers if you if you drop the connector in the wrong way you can break this this lock here which and let's talk about these this lock first yeah this little connection so so the us we have this on j1772 this is a j1772 connector we also have it on our DC fast charge CCS one we're the only country or or it's the only one that has it in Europe they're manix 2 and the ccs2 doesn't need this right the car has a pin that goes in it's on the car side like the Tesla connection right so much smarter so so we are built into having problems with these public charging right or even at home you know if it breaks it renders the connector pretty much much useless or sometimes you'll get it to charge right if for whatever reason it misses this step or you can get it just right and then you can just pull it out while it's juicing and it might be faster than it can actually shut off the power unfortunately here in North America we have the worst designed um AC and DC charging connectors even if they wanted to have CCS that ccs2 is a better solution this is why I wish stupid rocker pin and actually I was just doing the Tesla magic dock video that went up yesterday on this channel and it's metal yeah which is really nice so the Tesla gets it they get it yeah yeah all right what else we got Evo charge this is a new unit I just got it um it's a 40 amp uh pretty sure it's yeah it's 40 amp um yes nice and come back compact which I really liked about it I got a pretty good score it's a it's a new it's another new company with uh good uh um as far as I'm concerned for a first offering they did a pretty good job and and look for future iterations to be even better it does have a display screen here that shows you the the energy that's being dispensed I used one in Michigan on a road trip which will go up on out of spec motoring soon I was bringing the twizzy back and pulled into major blizzard plugged this thing in and it couldn't work it had an RFID on it so I just tapped my hotel room key yeah and it worked they just like it didn't it was the way they set it up something just needed something I'm like well that's dumb just like charged but yes I really loved the unit it worked great cable crappy connector Yep this this connector looks like it's going to break the second look at it it looks like a prototype connector and look at this little thing yeah and I I never really like when I see the exterior screws that hold it together and it's not just a molded one molded plastic so maybe for repairability but then maybe it'll break easier yeah it's just this is just a poor connector that that's something that they should improve we already did Emporia it's the same thing as Emporia this is kind of neat explain what's going on with this split volt thing so this is a smart circuit splitter this is for people that um either don't want to add a dedicated circuit for their EV charging or can't a lot of times your service panel is maxed out you can't add another 40 or 50 amp circuit for EV charging but these people have a clothes dryer near the garage yeah so what you do is you plug this into your clothes dryer Outlet right and then you plug your dryer into this side here it says dryer and then you plug your electric vehicle charging equipment here and what it does is it it will split the power well it doesn't necessarily split the power you only one uses at a time but if your car is charging and then you go and turn on your dryer the dryer gets the precedent so the dryer will turn on dry your clothes as soon as your clothes drying is done the car starts charging again and does it just cut the power completely to that circuit is that how that works yes it just shuts it off yeah it doesn't give you partial power right now there's certain cars and I want to say maybe the I3 is one of them I think my electric smart car is one that once it goes to sleep let's say your dryer runs for two hours and it kicks back on the car won't start charging because it needs a door cycle yeah the Newark I haven't exceed that with the New York yeah this might be just an old smart car thing but my my electric smart is that way so I have never seen this and it looks broken already yeah so um this is the pair gear um are you sure you say that right yeah I don't even know pair gear peer gear what do you say you say oh I'm bad at pronouncing everything well you know what I'm data pronounces right that was not good either because he was cool about it he was really cool yeah so um this is a portable level one level two charger that I just tested and um as you can see it's all grayed out the screen here um because this is IP67 rated which IP67 is waterproof not water resistant it's it's actually like one of the highest ratings you can get for electric vehicle charging equipment so when I do my tests what I did was I put it in a bucket of water and and like 10 seconds later so it was intended to be waterproof so what did they say about that by the way did they ever email you back no and they were emailing me every day up until the point where I reviewed it yeah and um and if you could see this side Kyle yeah um maybe you'll zoom in on no the the cable see the cable strain so that's not that that I don't know how this could get an IP67 rating there's no like the cable if you just bend it it pulls out it pops out of the unit and it lets water into the unit so this is a perfect example of what we're seeing now we're seeing all these new startup companies trying to get a piece of the charging pie so they're putting out these units that aren't safety certified that aren't made well and people are going to Amazon and it's a race to the bottom they're they're they're they're buying the cheapest equipment that's out there and then you know and then it breaks and the funny thing is I have arguments all the time about people on I tell them don't buy that it's a junk unit and they say oh I've been using it for eight months it's great you don't know what you're talking about right and then like six months later I get an email dude you're right man the thing melted my outlet or something yeah it worked very common it works great yeah until it doesn't right and then you're lucky if it just breaks right it doesn't burn creative buy good safety certified charging equipment don't buy the cheapest one you just spent forty fifty thousand dollars on a beautiful electric car spend an extra 200 bucks and buy a good charger please and if you notice things getting really hot yeah have an electrician come get a different unit because I have a friend right now who I'm actually sending a charger to a mobile one Nema 1450 and they're like I can barely touch my hand to the outlet I'm like dude put a new outlet on and like 100 yeah no not good so open evsc this this company is here for the Nerds yeah yeah this company here lets you make your own charger it's so cool and they've been around for a long time around a long time and they'll also sell you one fully made sure it's actually a pretty good unit here um the it's nice and compact this is a 48 amp oh really I need to hardwire it to for it to get 48 amps although the the crazy things drop test yeah the crazy thing is you don't really have to so open evsc what they do is they take a name of 1450. and then and then they remove this prong yeah because now it'll plug into a 60 amp outlet they make Nema 1460s okay I did not know that and so you can actually use this to charge as a plug-in unit at 48 amps now it's against code right but you can do this with this I don't recommend it and I probably shouldn't even have told people that you could do this interesting I never knew that yeah but you can do it and um so it's really like a nerd charger yeah really nerd charger so this is the grizzly smart um Grizzly comes in in black and white cases the white they just call it the Avalanche I like it it means nothing this is the Smart version of the grizzly it's the same thing but it's uh it has smart charging features right um this the grizzly Duo look how fat this bag is damn two connectors oh yeah check that out so if you have uh two EVS you can hardwire this or plug it in and it's but the thing is it's a 40 amp unit so you're only sweating yeah yeah you're only splitting 40 amps that really should have been an 80 amp unit split down to 40. and the way it it works it steps down the power so for instance and I'm going to probably explain this wrong because it's been a while since I I I reviewed it if if if your EV is only pulling six amps because it's almost charged sure you're not going to get 36 amps on the other side I think you get 20. like it's so it's just like once it's done charging then boom it reserves more than what it needs for each side interesting interesting now this is a company I've heard a lot about this wall box they are really small they have a Super Bowl ad yeah which was crazy that an electric vehicle company had a Super Bowl ad what is your opinion of this it's a very good unit now this is called the Pulsar plus this has been available in Europe for quite some time yes but they just brought it to the US last year and now they just built a giant manufacturing facility in Texas I did a whole video on that I checked out the video um so uh I checked out the uh the factory so this is their Pulsar plus it comes in a 40 amp or 48 amp unit this is the 40 amp unit because it has the plug right the 48 amp unit I actually installed up in Vermont at my in-laws house and I use it to charge my EVS when I go up to Vermont super unit tons of smart charging features ocpp compliant split power splitting this can split power amongst multiple wall boxes so if you really if you're an apartment complex and you've got 20 different uh you know spots you can line up a line of these and and not have to completely lose your power they'll load yeah actually I think Anna you and I were in Las Vegas recently and we saw six of them I think and they were all low there were low cherries exactly I didn't know what was going on we were getting different Power really good units okay well made really great construction these things are oh yeah yeah super great great construction and uh you know this thing you can duck it in a bucket of water you can shoot it without water yeah I I did all the tests super really good unit really like these units 700 uh it's expensive it's expensive and that's why I look at 700 I look at the Emporia 400 yeah but if you're going for Ultimate Looks and maybe some app functionality to me this is a very attractive unit to have on your wall it's small I like things small that's that's a pretty cool looking unit you're focusing on looks a lot more than I do here I know but hey I'm bringing the design design aspect and because we all know I'm a design guy and for me like I'm like so obviously that's why I'm with cars I want it to work okay but I do like that it's small I talk about that a lot I like small units I don't like when they take up a ton of real estate in your wall this is another amazing amazing event this is an early fall one yet only 16 amps this is the original one that that came out um so this is uh the 16 amp amazing I loved your review of this the top done yeah review yeah I even forget I do so many reviews like what did I do you made a lot of fun of it oh did I yes well you know I as you mentioned I do these comprehensive reviews and you know I'm genuinely surprised as I'm doing the review when things fail or when things work well you know what I mean so I think that's part of why people like my reviews you could tell I'm very enthusiastic about it and I'm also like like oh wow like yeah like this this didn't work like wonderful things and you get like you really you're like it breaks you're like oh my God that's great yeah so that that was cool Bosch Power Max 2 this is an old Bosch is one of the original uh EV charging cars are they out now I think they're still making charges but they really don't try to sell them yeah that's correct and on the end here's your favorite yeah the the they used to call it the juice booster but now it's the J plus booster yeah and and they they call it the juice booster in Europe right but do you know why they don't call it the juice booster in the U.S or no because it's a a trademark situation with nlx juice box right yeah and what's funny is I actually have two of the the engineering I actually did some work with these guys years ago I remember I remember when I was just starting YouTube yep exactly and I have two of their engineering uh juice boosters that are mobile so you can change the j1772 out for the Chinese connector for type two and uh you can change all the ends out I really love it we've put them through hell and they've just I think I put it through hell yeah what the heck did you do to this thing I ran over it with the lightning and the Rivia that's in my review because they said it can withstand seven thousand Pounds or something yeah and both of those trucks are like seven thousand Pounds I'm like okay yeah let's see if they're telling the truth it looks fine I mean yeah it worked it worked just fine you know I mean it just chewed the heck out of the rubber ends but these are just protectors these have nothing to do with the unit right um so yeah work really great and then we have another circuit splitter here on the end it's called Neo charge this is just like that split volt where you plug the back into a dryer outlet and then you've got your your outlet for your dryer and and your outlet for your EV charger and it will intelligently split the power depending if you're using your dryer or you're not so that way you don't have to buy uh you don't have to run a new dedicated circuit or unplug and replug every time which can really wear out the connector of the Nema 14. you really shouldn't be if if you have a a Nema 1450 out which I recommend hardwiring all your electric vehicle equipment I have a video here called how to safely charge a review on state of charge if you're interested in that Kyle's talked about it also I really recommend hard wiring but if you are going to use an outlet you really shouldn't be plugging in and out all the time it's it's just not it's it's going to wear the outlet out it's it's going to fail and if you do replace the outlet every year Outlets are cheap yeah we have two more uh things here this is my favorite by the way the price on this is pretty good it's outstanding this actually I I as I mentioned I'm going to be publishing my uh best of 2023 Chargers this was the the number one charger for for Tesla vehicles and the Emporio was my number one pick for non-tesla vehicles that makes sense because there's a Tesla yeah and you know but even though I mean that didn't guarantee it was going to win if it wasn't if Tesla didn't make a good charger I wouldn't say it's the charger use the adapter but the fact of the matter is it's a great unit and uh Tesla makes fantastic charging equipment both this and their mobile connector are outstanding beside their superchargers right you know our outstanding units has an integrated connector where you press the button and the charge port flap opens up you know none of the other cars do that um and uh it's just it's a Sleek it power shares yeah uh it's it's it's it can accept um over-the-air updates and Diagnostics and now you can accept payment from it yes exactly so yeah and you can limit it who's going to use it so fantastic uniform uh 425 it's insane how do you beat that yeah it's insane and then this is the one I've actually been most excited because as far as I understand it it's the only home AC charger that uses a CCS connector yes it is and that and let me just show you guys is what I'm talking about I'll unplug the loose in here which by the way we got here at single digit percent state of charge right Tom yep um if the Lucid would unlock there we go I could what are you up to now got to be close to 30 34. 34. we've added 123 miles of rated range with the 21 inch wheels in like an hour and a half yeah it's it's this is uh you know for for home charging it doesn't get any better than that this thing rips and the thing is j1772 is limited to 80 amps as per the code but you can see here this we're using a home charger and it's a CCS connector so I know you have some opinions about this and the charger uh here you go tell us what you think I know you said you liked this connector so first of all I really like the connector if you if those of you who have uh CCS enabled electric vehicles in charge at say Electrify America or any public charger you know the connectors are clunky right yes and they're heavy and they're they're they're they're they're difficult to use so you know for a a CCS connector this is a nice solution I like it I wish it was out in the field 100 it's got a really good grip it's small you know it doesn't have this giant even though the the end has to be the same size right it's it's much more elegant now maybe this wouldn't hold up to commercial use maybe for like a 40 or 50 kilowatt charger with no liquid cooling like it should do that it's it's a really good it's made by Phoenix contact it's a really good unit here I I I'm I I love how it feels in my hand uh like I said I um connector snob and they did a really good job with this Phoenix contact even with their high power HPC have the handles on them they they know what's up they know what's up you know the ergonomics is really important it seems like too often the companies don't factor in ergonomics at all right and I'm looking at you and phenol by the way so that you know Cable's got a it's got actually surprisingly thin cable considering that this is an 80 amp unit right it's thinner than many of the 40 amp what's up with that why do you think I I it's it's been an enigma yeah um you know when I do my cold weather testing and I freeze the units you know I measure them all did this fit in your freezer um no I I actually I I I I did the cold weather test with it oh yeah I did put it in the freezer I haven't I haven't done a full review on it yet though I just have that video clips but I think it was 19 millimeters the the thickness on this cable there's 40 amp charges I have here where I measured at 23 millimeters for the cable wow and that's a big difference and it just makes the everyday usability you've got to drag a heavy cable to your car and right if it's outside or whatever it's just like look at Tesla has one of the thinnest cables yeah it's amazing and that's a six a 48 amp unit right so those argonomics is really important but I love what Ford did here with this it's a good cable it's a really nice connector and um you know as Kyle mentioned the uh the the j1772 part of it the top half is What charges the car we only use the two DC pins when my lightning is powering the house because it has what but Ford calls the home an intelligent backup power system where you can actually use the vehicle to power your house this can do this All That the but will it work with this charger I don't believe it would so that's the weird thing we're at right now there's no like set standard for vehicle to load or grid so you have to buy like the Lucid charger which can you even buy yet they said they're going to send me one like last week okay great so maybe just coming out now so you have to get the Lucid thing with the Lucid system and then you sell your car and you buy a lightning that doesn't work you got to switch everything 15 grand to rewire your house this doesn't make sense from a backup situation for most people it's a really cool system it's amazing that Ford went out of their way to design and we'll link that video because that was I think the best video on YouTube I told you that that I watched in a long time I put a lot of work into that it was incredible truly the best if you have time but you do because you're watching this watch that video we just spent an hour going over every charger unless they have time if you're still with us I bet you're a trooper thanks yes this is the out of spec core audience and I was blown away but holy smokes how much did it cost you to wire up the what this is why we're here we want to see this whole system so we're going to go check that out next um you know the the the hardware yeah for me which was my service upgrade I had to put in a new meter pan I mean it was but the hardware was over eight thousand dollars yeah crazy that's without labor now the Labor uh you know full disclosure my my channel partner Q Merritt picked up the labor end of it sure and I had to pay for the uh all the the hardware and the parts and everything and the home integration kit alone from Ford well actually you buy through Sunrun for its Partners four thousand dollars right and then you know I had to buy new meter pans and new 200 amp panels and you know hundreds of feet of wire and everything I mean that's what we're getting into now so I'm gonna manually open the charge port on this I'm stealing more electricity because uh we should have plugged in the blink and charged it do you even have a blink card no who does no one uses blink anymore they are honestly the worst charge provider they just got a huge contract with USPS hey they just tried to sponsor us and we're like sorry your stuff doesn't work um so what other cool I mean just can we take a breeze over here sure this this is like my adapter rack yeah I love adapter well this is the old school Clipper Creek we talked about these floors I just saw one at Motorworld in Stuttgart for our German viewers go by there on the back side I have four of these you want one yes yeah I want to put one on the wall I'll give you one um I just saw a roadster charger one of these it was so cool I've got a whole bunch of portable chargers down here all level one Chargers amazing these are adapters we have our Tesla this is CS is that the official one I don't know if that's the official it doesn't feel like it that might be the electron let me see okay yeah that's electron it's a different material than the Tesla one so but it works just as fine and it has the Safety Lock which is important for that this is the CCS this is a uh Tesla to CCS uh it's a j1772 Tesla to J 1772 yeah from uh 40 amp unit right I've got uh here's actually a cautionary tale for some of our viewers with these should we mention this about 40 or 48 yeah yeah and even 80 amp versions because like here's the thing you could plug this into uh my house I have the older Tesla wall connectors that'll do 80 amps you could plug that into this and then plug this into a lightning and this will just glow bright red and um yeah at best it'll just melt and stop but you could really screw up your car badly yeah so you know you have to make sure that whatever is in the middle of your charger and your vehicle yeah it can deliver the full amount of power when I use this I try and set the vehicles down to you know 40 amps or below especially if it'll charge overnight electric vehicles yeah well our e-tron will pull 48 amps and I'm like that's why you get one of these well I have one this is the 48 amp but I have the 40 amp one of those this is the 48 amp I want to get that really I recommend if you're going to buy one of these Tesla to j17 72 adapters get a 48 amp even if your car doesn't pull 40 amps your next car May yeah so keep it safe buy this thing put it in your in in your trunk or your trunk so you always have it in case you're out on the road and there's a Tesla destination everyone should just carry that in their car if you see someone stranded just like you know it's a good idea and then of course I have the the Tesla adapters that come with the vehicle right and then I have this was an early uh this is the Ukraine yeah I've never seen one before it doesn't work he also has the reverse of it yeah and he has a whole bunch of weird adapters so you can drive American cars in Europe because they get imported 100 yeah I I bought this it didn't work we were trying to figure out and the best we could come up with was he thinks that this tab yeah was drilled slightly too far forward so the Tesla panel locked in wouldn't lock in so without that lock and you can allow me to charge no I mean it's hard to see it when it's in first Circle because this blocks it you got the big CCS connector here and I was going to put chalk on it and see if I but then I just then Tesla came so I was like okay 500 just got license right it's a good paperweight exactly I mean it's a cool Relic I mean that's part of being on the bleeding edge you get screwed yeah and now the Tesla CCS adapter is what 200 bucks something like that and now electron lowered their price oh okay yeah yeah but I would just buy the Tesla one yeah probably probably that's what I would do at least although like I said I've been using an electron one it seems fine I almost think like they have a the plastic might be a little different but they have the same by the same Factory in China or whatever you know but like at that point just get the test I I agree I agree yeah but you know Tesla's out of stock a lot oh it could be so it's a good background a lot of a lot of times it's out of stock yeah so um thanks for taking us on a tour these are the Chargers to come by those are the next reviews that are coming just a little sneak peek yep so what uh let's talk about your house your wiring the real you know nerd stuff for what you have specifically going on here and mostly you rewired everything thing when you got this Ford charge station Pro yeah it happened around the same time that you had your garage redone you like went all out yeah so what's up so when I got the when I bought the lightning and I wanted to charge it as fast as possible that I couldn't and plus I wanted to get the charge station Pro so I could do the home was that energy with your truck so it comes it comes standard with the extended range battery lightning if any chance I had yeah extended range comes with the Ford charge session Pro if you get the standard range lightning and you want it you have to buy it it's 1300 go on eBay because every extended range of the people that didn't install them you could you can get them for Great Deals right now I'm sure yeah and um so so that you know I was already pushing the limits of I was probably over my allegedly yeah I was I was pushing it before and um so I knew if I was going to add any more amps or I I had to upgrade the house and uh so adding a 100 amp circuit your chances are I mean most people can not most people people but a lot of people can install a 40 amp or 60 amp circuit without having a service upgrade many people can but if you want to add a 100 amp circuit which is what you need for an 80 amp unit most people are going to need a service upgrade yeah and it's it's important to mention this because I think Ford originally stated like you have to have a crazy panel for this but can't you dial it down yeah so and there's an interesting story about that so Ford posted on their website that in order to get the home integration kit and the charge station Pro you need to have they picked some weird number it was like 300 300 or so 360 amps price yeah and I'm like that doesn't exist first of all and so so I reached out to Ford because a lot of my followers were said knew that I was getting a light and we're like Tom what's up with this like 360 amps that's a crazy amount of power so I contacted for it I just spoke to Darren about it and then I talked to Ryan O'Gorman yep who's like their their charging Guru for the home Energy Systems and um and he said look he goes he goes and uh an engineer did a calculation and figured like the average home should have that much power but it's it's actually wrong it's incorrect so I was like well why is it still up in your website and he's like that's a good question the next day it was removed oh great so I got that removed from the Ford website okay and and then they they they kind of were great with it saying you know you you know you may have to have a service upgrade they didn't put a set figure on it because right the fact of the matter is there is no set figure on what you need it depends on what else you have in your house if you're running your hall house on electricity if you have an electric range an electric clothes dryer electric heat then and then you want to add a big circuit you're probably going to need a circuit surface upgrade but many homes have spare capacity and the this charge station Pro you can derate it you don't have to have it deliver in the the 80 amps we're delivering now what's the lowest you can go with this I think 12 or 16 amps yeah 240 volts yeah really way down you can doubt there's a dip switch inside so you can similar to the old version yeah exactly yeah the new version of this I think it's just in the app yeah uh but the uh the the the inside you can dial it way down maybe it's 20 amps okay but pretty low enough yeah you can dial it way down and um the fact that the thing about that is if you dial it way down you can still deliver 40 amps to the house even though you're setting your thing to deliver 20 at your to the car because it's wired no it's separate wiring there's two completely different runs one Powers the vehicle and one sends power can you hook this up without any return wiring then oh yeah okay so that's what most likely yeah exactly but that's if you don't have home home integration unit itself so let's say it's just Joe Schmo about a lightning he just wants to charge it doesn't care about the rest he can put this unit in because it's free 100 wire it up to the maximum of this panel let's say he can only do a 60 amp circuit and he's going to charge at 48 amps he would hit run you know number six wire and set it to 48 amps good to go done and the only problem with that really is just the limitation of the CCS connector because actually what happens if you plug this in to a non-lightning does it still charge like a like a rivian that's not like looking for CCS it's charging now oh duh gosh why am I such that was a trick question no no I was like he's so like I'm thinking cow's thinking Next Level I'm missing what he's trying to say and I look stupid but that was the case right I answered my own question here so basically the car probably doesn't even know it has CCS connected right now nothing not doesn't know at all but the downside is if you have a smart car like I do you actually can't charge with this yes exactly right if you don't have CCS if you just have J 1778 so if you have a Nissan Leaf right sure can you just saw off the CCS connection and plug it in I would I don't know because I mean I would imagine somebody who's really technically Advanced could and then cut the wiring and everything but why the hell yeah yeah you know right I mean right so it's at that point remove the cable and just put a cable with it with it makes sense yeah um so the unit's pretty good comes free you had to have it wired up to both 80 amp output which is a 100 amp circuit and 40 amp return and 40 amp return do you want to show us how that all looks downstairs check it out I got I got the whole setup in my basement because this is the crazy expensive part that you went through and I think just before we do this it's like No One's Gonna do this I mean I wish they would yeah but and Ford really is a Pioneer with allowing this that's the thing first of its kind so you know you have to expect it to be expensive and maybe not be as good as what a lot of people hope it would be because the first of anything that's that's what you get but right there they have customers buying these you know there's they I saw some people in the forums that have it especially you know a lot of people that want the latest greatest toy yeah you know that way maybe money isn't an object because it's very expensive sure you know and and there's less expensive Alternatives if you really need to power and the truck can kind of power your house anyway you could run a whole bunch of extension cords and do a lot of stuff it's not as elegant as as you know having the house wired but you know there there's I think there's a good amount of people that got enough extra cash that wants the latest greatest toy that's going to keep Ford busy selling these well honestly I am actually interested in it for our Hub let's go check it out let's go see it well now you joining me in uh Tom's Basement we may not make it out of here um by the way everyone only just sees this bit this is like a really nice finished basement he's got like a freaking huge TV over here with Super Bowl parties and stuff so you know everyone I I just pictured you had like the worst basement on the planet we walked down here you were like I was expecting to be like a crawl space I don't do crawl spaces no I know I know and you got an awesome pool back here in like a beautiful spot so um you'll have a full Deep dive on everything but can you walk our viewers briefly through how you have everything loaded up you're fine you're good the audio is good Pete's over here coming to say hi crashing videos he has a blink card this is Blink card owner of things so you'll see Pete on Tom's Channel when you did the GM uh EV live video yes yeah yep all right so walk us through left to however you do it I'll start over here because I'm over here okay I have 400 amp service I told you I upgraded to these are the two 200 amp panels This is my natural gas generator so I have a pretty much a whole home natural jet Skinner natural gas generous it's just over right outside the window we get a lot of power outages here I live in kind of a rural part of New Jersey and um there's a lot of power outage sometimes for a week or two at a time oh wow so I installed this maybe 15 years ago luckily right before hurricane Sandy I installed oh wow so I was like one of the only houses around here that had power but so the fact of the matter is being that I had this I really didn't need to get the Ford's intelligent backup power where the truck and power your house I just wanted to get it it was a wonderful thing and for the audience I could use it for audience and everything so I'll explain how it works so the way it works now this really Powers all my critical loads when we have a power outage you would have your critical loads powered by the truck if you didn't have a backup generator so this is still cool like in your case you can still take the truck out exactly and all the critical loads in the house still run yeah so but I have about 40 amps worth of circuits on the truck panel which are kind of releasing it up though right yeah exactly but it's not things that I really need like it's the the dishwasher down here in the basement sure actually the refrigerator in the basement is on it I shouldn't have done that oh really yeah so so so yeah I I made a mistake there but anyway so things we've seen time to rip it all up don't don't that's coming I already have next phase two oh my goodness that's crazy so yeah so now that's this is the house so what question though how hard was it to get 400 amps hooked up I know you said you had to get a Transformer upgrade yeah do most lightning owners have to do that if they want to put the system in what's your impression so probably not you remember you're just out in the garage and I have just going to my garage 100 amp circuit for the the four charge station Pro a 60 amp circuit going to my Tesla wall connector and two 50 amp circuits going to the Nema 1450s that's more than a typical houses power level yeah exactly so it you know in my garage alone I've got you know over 200 what well over 200 amps of power right so um so so for me it's it's Unique because it's what I do you know but um most people will probably have to get some sort of a service upgrade if they wanted to do the 100 amp charger and Ford intelligent backup power um but not to a 400 amp service probably to something you know the next step up um there's a lot of houses with with 100 amp Mains right so they go up to 200 amp you know and then and then there's load management devices you can get where you can maximize the amount of power you have I'm really thinking about getting into that topic and I hope you cover it too no definitely because load management especially for big apartment buildings yeah but but let's we can we can okay yeah all right we can go down a rabbit hole yes yeah so so this is the house now we'll jump into the Ford intelligent backup power system it's these three units here this is the inverter this is called a dark start battery this Powers the system as soon as you get a power outage it needs power to function so this is a battery that allows the system to operate so it can communicate with the truck and then turn on and power the house so will the the Ford charge facing probe it'll just be functional right when you plug it you like you wouldn't it does have a light on it or anything so yeah this there is from this system yeah there's um a wire that goes to it it's it's not like the main no it's like a communication exactly exactly you'll see there's a bunch of them going up there's a lot of wires there's a lot of wires going everywhere so so that's what happens and this is the transfer switch this Islands my house or this system when there's a power outage if the system is going to be generating power you have to make sure you're cut off from the grid otherwise you'll be sending energy electricity back to the grid and it's dangerous and it's illegal right yeah it's a danger to the to the the line worker so this is responsible power outage which happens this boom shuts shuts yourself off and well this turns on gives us power it shuts itself off from the grid and then you know it waits for power comes in the truck for the truck let's say your truck's plugged in and charging let's say you know you know a storm's coming I'm going to charge my truck up to 100 let's rip get as much energy as in there as possible as soon as you lose power how long does it take so for it to start powering that's a good question um the generator takes about eight seconds right this system I've noticed varies from one minute to as much as three minutes really very long and I don't know why it takes different lengths of time and Ford hasn't been able to give me an answer on that yet okay so so but it does always work but like the one time I was actually doing a demonstration for somebody and I'm like [Applause] okay uh I promise you it does work but then all of a sudden it just kicked on I don't understand why it does that it's hard to get answers from Sunrun and Ford it's a brand new system it's the first of its kind we talked about this you know I I I think it still has some some and everyone in there like units needs to get trained up on it because you Ford recommends Sunrun installments that's their that's their preferred installer they don't require it no they don't require it and so qumera installed this yeah and what was that experience like basically they must have been the first non-sun run installation yeah so you know qmerit has installed a few of these by now okay but but what we did what was um with they actually used my insulation here to make a video to train their other electricians so we had a full film crew here that's where you got those nice shots from recording everything of what was going on and um and because they used it to make a video so the cumera installers can install this in their customers houses because they want a piece of that pie too you know Sunrun is doing the best they can but I don't know if they're equipped to do a national roll out on something like this right they're solar installer primarily and you know there's a lot of people been asking about it and kumara's got a good National reputation and I know a lot of my followers have have have contacted Humera to install this system um I've been told that right Hugh Merit you know they saw that at work because quite honestly when this first started getting installed when people were getting them installed a lot of them didn't work you know Nikki Gordon blew up she took her months to get it I remember and I don't know if it was the installer's fault or faulty equipment I really don't know why it wasn't working yeah but a lot of people were reporting on the forums the system just doesn't work kumeric came in here installed it boom first shot everything worked I made a video I said look you know you know it's working and I think I was actually the first video yeah you were of it functioning yes there were other videos of people showing it but it didn't work right so yeah this battery just to start here this will be the first line of defense to power everything how big is this battery I know it's a lithium ion battery I don't know how big it is I had the specs I knew it but I don't remember okay but how long do you think it would keep the system ready oh because if you're like one way for a week a long time yeah I don't think that's an issue at all okay good because it's using very little sure just to keep some lights on somewhere it's using very little power um this also replaced your solar inverter yes so so I have as we met we talked about 9 KW solar system I had two inverters here's one it's still existing and I had another one here so this replaced one of the inverters and um uh so basically half my system runs through the Ford uh uh inverter now and uh this also when the power comes from the lightning it's going to come as DC right it comes into this inverter and it changes it to eight so can it blend the solar and the truck it can I just quite honestly don't know how it works oh like I'm confused a little bit and I've asked for some answers with Ford and Sunrun about um what happens when let's say my solar arrays is producing more energy than what the house is consuming right what happens where's that extra power go I don't know at this point but I know it might be grounded I'm not sure how it works but I know it does work because what happens if you overload the solar what do you like would it just shut off the house if if you have if you have the solar not producing let's say solar is only producing two kilowatts yeah oh oh yeah something yeah yeah I'm not sure what would happen with that to be honest with you we got to do some testing yeah well it's here it's here let's do it yeah good so but yeah so that that's how it works so um and the cool thing about it is the the way my system is currently set up when we have a powder hour outage my solar shuts off that inverter is an island it doesn't shuttle shut itself off from the grid so um I used to lose my solar generation but now when we have a power outage I'm at least getting the solar generation that runs through this guy here and how many kilowatts is this doing four and a half yeah about four okay yeah it's not it's it's it's or maybe a little lesson for it's like 3.9 or something like that yeah but this is a newer unit than this by quite a bit so this is probably better 14 years old this is probably more efficient oh yeah much better yeah yeah so I had the system installed in 2009 so yeah and it's been great never broke never had a problem problem just keeps working wow that's pretty cool so basically this is you know as complicated as you can get because you had the truck with not only charging but backup pack of power you had the generator generator solar yeah and like two different inverters and they had function and talk Communicator oh by the way this is the sub panel for the Ford intelligent backup power these are the circuits that it's powering so when the island when it becomes islanded yeah right when this switches this is where the power goes yeah from the solar or or the or the truck right but even when it's all working power's still running through these right yes yeah right now it is yeah because the the this this um this panel Powers this okay I see so that has two inputs then okay wow complicated what's your recommendation to our viewers who want to have like the ultimate home energy situation like you have have a do you think a generator is still needed today day do you think this is a replacement what's your impression you know maybe the ultimate instead of the natural gas generator would be a lot of on-site energy storage battery yeah you know I think that would be ideal uh but you need a lot like if you know if you have a solar array and you could be producing if you have extended power outages like we had 15 days when we had Hurricane Sandy wow there was another bad storm we had here where we had power for 12 days another one 10 days so maybe just do a two week plan if it's in the winter and there's snow on my panels yeah now what do I do if I don't have the natural gas generator those batteries aren't going to last forever so there's no perfect solution well the the the the the the the permanent natural gas generator perfect for here in New Jersey they're not great in California because when they have earthquakes they shut the gas supply off right so it's different like there's no one answer for everything Kyle um you know I like on-site energy storage um I I do like the Vehicle Systems because think about it my Lightning's got a 140 kilowatt hour battery pack how many power walls do you have to buy to get 140 kilowatts it would pay for a whole lightning so so you know probably more it's it's you know we have to figure out the best way to utilize that that energy storage you have this is Phase One this is the first of its kind these systems are going to get better they're going to get cheaper they're going to get more efficient they're going to be able to work with different systems right now I don't think this works with a power wall oh interesting yeah I don't think the Ford system can communicate with the power it that has to happen these systems have to be able to communicate with with stationary energy storage we need a standard yeah yeah there has to be code written so that I can plug the Lucid into this like it is now and act as backup and hopefully these conversations it's going to happen you know it's just um this is the first of its kind it wasn't going to come out of the box and be the best of everything and do everything right but it's still pretty cool it's still pretty cool it's expensive all in the average person can probably expect to spend and somewhere between ten and thirteen thousand dollars well for the for this system that's with your installation with the installation of the charge station Pro yeah with probably you're gonna need a service upgrade the Kit's four thousand dollars the labor is going to be six five six thousand dollars it's very expensive but um it's a it's really cool that your car can power your house and it's cool that it was ready pretty much it started production for lightning this didn't come out like five years after the truck this was like five months ago I got this delivered three months after I got my truck crazy so Ford was like on it they wanted this to be a part of it I don't think maybe all of them realize the economics until now because when we first reviewed the truck in Texas and all that they were like look at all this cool stuff and I've we haven't really heard them talk about it since so it's it's an expensive system but again I think there's enough people that um you know do have the excess money that want it because it's re it's it's a cool thing to have you know listen a lot of our finance a lot of our purchase and decisions aren't based on you know Financial sense I want it you know you said air right okay he doesn't need it hundred grand on a car you know you know so he your dad could spend thirteen thousand dollars on a home energy backup system if we wanted to there's there's enough people out there but for the everyday you know working class guy that you know is is paying his bills and sending his kids to college this probably isn't the best solution right for a home backup but it paves the way to a path towards that we have to start somewhere yes this this is a necessity it's like the ten thousand dollar plasma TV set you know of of 25 years ago or whatever you know yes if nobody bought them we wouldn't be able to get I wouldn't be able to get that 85 inch Sony for 1500 bucks yeah Fourth of July sale last summer you know well well I can't thank you enough for the full tour of all the units your knowledge of level two charging and DC charging is crazy we're gonna have a video on Tom's Channel I believe in uh I don't know whenever that goes up yeah and um thank you guys for watching this extremely long tour of the most complicated house in America thanks for listening to my boring talk about home charging displaying all the charging and now this this is pretty cool though you gotta admit I left it off this system is pretty cool I thought it was a great so thanks for sticking with us if you did we'll see you on another one soon bye-bye

Channel: Out of Spec Reviews

Views: 74,297

Keywords: Car, Review, Acceleration, Braking, POV, Handling, Test, VS, Comparison, Interior, Exterior, Supercar, Hypercar, Sedan, SUV, CUV, TFL, Redline Reviews, Motor1, sports car

Id: d8DbYIiTDd0

Length: 76min 22sec (4582 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 22 2023