Zencar Tesla to J1772 Adapter Review: Charging EVs With Tesla's Charger

POSITIVES

✓ Form Factor

Doesn't have additional cables

✓ 240V of Charge

Utilizes the full 240V capabilities

✓ Future Usages

Can be adaptive to many vehicles in the future

NEGATIVES

✘ Fit with Plug

Takes adjusting to lock into place

✘ Adjustment Period

Takes a few attempts to rely on

Purchase Price: $159.99

Buy on Amazon

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When you migrate over to a fully electric vehicle household, you have to figure out some logistical things to make things flow harmoniously. As nice as it is to think you can park two EVs in your garage and have them fully charged and ready to go every morning, like everything else in life, preparations are in order to make that happen. When my wife and I added our second EV to the garage, we had to consider multiple options to figure out how to maintain charges for our now all-electric household. 

Charging two Electric Vehicles in one garage

An adapter like the EVCARS product we’re reviewing, while still costly, is an investment that can be used in various scenarios in the expanding EV world going forward.

Our new home was built in 2020 with our garage fully configured for the solar and electric lifestyle (by CA law). This meant that we already had all the electrical wiring ready for a NEMA 14-50 outlet. Although Tesla gave us a Gen 1 Tesla High Power Charger (as an apology for botched deliveries), we chose to simply use our mobile charger with a wall mount to house the cable instead. It’s simple and worked out nicely for our garage. With our Polestar 2 now competing for electricity with the Tesla Model 3, we now have to juggle a mixture of trickle charging with a dose of 40A current. On nights where one car needs to replenish more miles than the other, it would get to occupy the NEMA 14-50 outlet while the other one gets the 15A wall outlet. Instead of unplugging Tesla’s proprietary charger out of the NEMA socket and inserting the SAE J1772 cable from the Polestar 2, I wanted to utilize a more organized method. In this situation, I needed to find an adapter to plug into the Polestar 2 to use my current Tesla setup. The included Polestar mobile charging cable is quite bulky and it would require me to purchase and install another cable mount for my wall since the plugs don’t match the same hole. An adapter like the Zencar product I’m reviewing, while still costly, is an investment that can be used in various scenarios in the expanding EV world going forward.

Team J1772?

It seems that most of the automobile industry has consolidated around the J1772 plug as the industry standard going forward. Polestar is one of those companies that use a J1772 plug to juice up their cars. With this adapter, the male Tesla plug inserts into the female connector of the J1772 plug as the male side goes into the car. As is with many J1772 chargers, there is a release clip that matches the form of the plug on the Polestar 2. There’s also a release security lock on the female side that connects with the Tesla charger to daisy chain the two together. Toggling the lock is essential to the operation of this adapter as if it doesn’t click into place, your car will display an error message.

It took me a few tries to understand what a correct connection was as it doesn’t naturally click into place when inserted with the Tesla plug. I have plugged the Polestar 2 with this adapter in overnight thinking it was charging only to wake up to see the Polestar charge indicator displaying an error red instead of green. With that said, the adapter does work as advertised with some patience and tinkering. It simply takes a bit of finessing to rely on it fully. There’s a precise way for the joint to attach that requires a little bit of added force prior to locking the gripe. This isn’t something that is communicated with the product or listing on Amazon. It’s literally something you have to learn as you use the product. Once I understood this, I was more consistent with getting the car to charge on the first try. With my Polestar 2 and my Tesla mobile charger combination, I’ve been hitting close to 240V with around 30A of current. That’s almost identical to what I’ve been getting when charging off the Tesla mobile charger on the NEMA plug for the Model 3. The adapter hasn’t siphoned off any electricity in the process of transferring energy from the Tesla cable to the car. It does exactly as advertised.

With the help of this adapter, I can keep my Tesla mobile charger locked into its spot on the wall with the NEMA plug. On days where the Model 3 has seen more miles on the road, the cable reaches across to plug into it. The Polestar 2 then gets to use its own provided charging cable plugged into the wall outlet to trickle charge overnight. Then on days where each car actually uses their respective chargers, the adapter can be easily stored away into a drawer. This routine swaps depending on which vehicle requires more juice on certain days. Thanks to the pandemic, my wife and I haven’t needed to commute to our offices on the same days too frequently. Our setup works for our current routine. I might eventually need to add a second NEMA 14-50 plug somewhere in my two car garage, but for now I’m happy with this solution. While I personally like the smaller form factor of Tesla’s proprietary plug, I do concede that there may very well be a day where my garage does not have a Tesla occupying one of the spots. If I do leave the cable on the wall as I have it set up currently, I can still continue to use my layout as it is with any other J1772 vehicle thanks to this adapter.    

The Amazon listing says that this adapter is IP44 certified which should allow it to get wet from outdoor use as well. It’s constructed from a type of nylon material and while I haven’t left it out in a storm yet, it does seem to be a sturdy build that is sealed cleanly. It doesn’t feel like a cheap Chinese product. This form factor was also something that contributed to why I purchased it over other competitors. I liked that it didn’t have a short cable attached to it and that the entire product functioned in just the form of a handle. This makes for a much cleaner setup than having an adapter handle connected to a cable that connects to the handle of the original plug which then has a cable of its own as well. 

Covering all the EV bases

For a $160, I actually preferred adding this to my EV arsenal to compliment the opposite J1772 to Tesla plug (that you get with a Tesla). This allows me to literally cover all the bases I may need as an EV owner living in North America. While this doesn’t make it so that I can charge my Polestar at a Supercharger, it does mean that I could hypothetically charge it at a destination charger at a hotel as the destination charger has the same guts as Tesla’s High Powered connector which this is also compatible with. I was originally a bit frustrated at the connection of the adapter and I still have nights where I need to unplug and reconnect a few times before getting it right, but overall this gets the job done for my situation as a multiple electric vehicle owner without needing to spend hundreds of extra dollars to add another NEMA plug at the moment.

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