Are there any horror (or success) stories out there about owning an EV without the ability to charge at home?
Love the idea of an EV, feel like I can’t do it without at-home charging capability though.
Personally, I wouldn’t get an EV without easy charging access. That could be at home, at work, etc.
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It might not make sense even with home charging depending on where you are and electric rates. In CA without solar right now, calculating my electric cost for my EQE AMG is at around 30mpg equivalent, not that much better than an ICE and a hybrid would be more efficient.
If you don’t have at home charging and have to pay for high voltage charging rates, it’s a no brainer.
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EVs are great if you have a place you are regularly going to be that has a way to charge. If that’s where you live or work, you can get away with a normal household plug and the charger cord that comes with the car assuming a fairly efficient EV and moderate usage. If you can do your grocery shopping someplace you can fast charge, that probably won’t be very inconvenient.
What is not true is that every EV owner needs to spend $2500 immediately to install the highest power smart Level 2 EVSE available. An L1 or a low power L2 would work fine for many people. So when I see people saying that they would need to upgrade their electrical service to get an EV, I don’t think that makes sense.
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Don’t have a horror story as such but it is highly impractical to own an EV without level-2 charging at home. We used to be one car household with just an EV. After a few initial terrible experiences, I got a hybrid as a second car for road trips or anything longer than 2 hours of driving.
On L1 you’re looking at charging every night all night long unless you drive very short distances every day.
I pay around 0.11/kwh so it is much cheaper than gas, but in CA it really wouldn’t make much sense to get an EV “to save on gas”.
Still have the tax credit though for the charger and install, so that helps.
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Plenty of people here in the Northeast have EVs without home chargers in my experience. I used to run into them making small talk at EA stations and I have plenty of coworkers hogging up the free work chargers because they don’t have home charging. It’s doable but definitely a hassle versus the convenience of home charging.
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Which really isn’t a problem.
When I had just a level 1, when i got home, i parked and plugged in. When i left in the morning, i unplugged and left.
Now with a level 2, when i get home, I park and plug in. When i leave in the morning, I unplug and leave.
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no issues with a tesla + L1 charging for 3 years. it’s even parked outside. It charges up overnight enough to last me for my daily commute. On the rare occasions that I don’t have enough juice to get where I need to go, superchargers are plenty convenient
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Only you could answer your question…but to summarize blindly: I’ve been EV since 2020 and no means to charge at home… I am 3 EV’s right now…but for my situation it works perfectly. We’ve discussed this “issue” in other threads a lot-so start searching the threads and find some answers… bottom line is: IT WORKS 
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before we bought our house, we were charging our i4 every two weeks at the local walmart fast charger and it did the job. The caveat is that my wifes commute was 2 minutes away therefore it was viable. Now that we have the house with a level 2 charger, its convenient because if we know we plan on driving far, we have the option to charge ahead of time and take the car wherever we want.
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How far is your nearest charger? Do you have time to charge at odd hours to avoid waiting in line? How’s your usage to determine how many times do you need to charge in a week? One thing for sure, without free charging, you will not save money on public level 3 charging, you may end up paying more than gas.
Don’t you get free charging for 2 years at EA?
Not going to waste my time in an EA queue few times a week just to save a few bucks… same reason I don’t go Costco for gas.
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Without L2 charging or without any kind of charging, even on a regular outlet?
For my use case, L1 is barely enough to refill my wife’s daily commute and DC chargers are quite far.
It really depends on how many miles you need every day.
Can charge on a regular outlet but there’s 3 cars in the house and this hypothetical EV would not get driveway priority LOL
Depends on where in California. Cities with municipal power (for example, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, Sacramento) usually have flat rates around $0.16 to $0.18/kWh, which is a lot better than paying over 3x that during summer peak with PG&E (or SCE or SDGE).
I’ve got solar but still have my charger configured to not charge during peak time (4pm to 9pm for me). I’m on NEM 2.0 with PG&E and it’s more valuable to export excess solar during peak times (at peak pricing) then charge later at off-peak rates.