Charging Your Tesla Model X At Home: How Much Will It Cost You?

As far as EVs go, the Tesla Model X is definitely on the beefier side. As a seven-seater, it's naturally got a big battery, which means it can cart you around for a long time. That also means, though, that it's a thirsty beast, and charging can take a decent amount of both time and electricity. Say what you will about the cost and impact of gas-powered vehicles, at least only takes around five minutes to gas up at a station.

While the main draw of any good EV is the money you save on using your home's electrical grid to refuel instead of a gas station, juicing up a powerful, high-capacity vehicle could potentially cost you just as much as a weekly gas run. So, if you intend to charge up your Tesla Model X exclusively in your own garage, how much will it cost you in the long run?

The Tesla Model X has a 100 kWh battery, rated for approximately 547 km of travel on a full charge (or a little over 300 miles, if you prefer). The exact amount you spend on your regular home recharges depends heavily on how much of the battery you burn through on average, but for the sake of example, let's assume you're draining the entire battery on a daily basis.

According to Tesla's Charging Calculator, based on the national United States average of $0.15 per kilowatt-hour for electricity usage, recharging your Model X after driving 300 miles would cost you about $15 a day, or about $466 a month. While that can seem expensive, it's actually about half of what it would cost to refill a normal car with gas every day, assuming a gas price of around $3.50 per gallon, so it's still a money-saver in the end.

Of course, you can't charge your Tesla Model X at home without a proper EV charging station in your garage or yard. As a reminder, you should only recharge a Tesla EV with a normal wall socket in emergencies, as that kind of power flow isn't really safe long-term.

Fully charging the Model X's considerable battery can take more than a day if you're using a lower-end charger like a 1-phase 16A. To ensure you can actually use your Model X every day, your best choice for a charger would be a 22kw 3-phase 32A hookup. A charger like that could fully recharge the Model X's tank in about 7 hours, restoring about 78 km/h worth of travel every hour. That's the best you can get out of an AC charging port, which is more realistic to have installed in a residential home than a DC port.