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Electric vehicles have become more and more a part of my work at Car Talk and Torque News. Here at Torque News, we routinely do in-depth automotive product tests of all sorts. Tires, EV chargers, and air pumps. That sort of thing. One company that has offered us excellent support is Emporia. We’ve been testing one of Emporia’s Level 2 J-Plug Chargers now since May of 2023, and an NACS-equipped Emporia charger since July of 2024. Let’s review how well the units work after years of continuous testing.
Emporia Level 2 Charger – Compatible With Affordable Mainstream EVs as Well As Exotic Supercars
I’m blessed to be in my job. I test a new vehicle most weeks of the year, and both battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles (PHEVs) have become the mainstay of my work. I still test ICE cars, but the automakers send us what they are most proud of and want to see highlighted, so it’s been a long string of outstanding EVs over the past few years.
That means I am able to plug in a new EV to our Emporia test unit on a weekly basis. I wish I had a complete list of the EVs we’ve successfully charged, but it’s basically every EV model in America.
Hyundai and Kia have been very supportive, and we’ve tested virtually every one of their EVs.
Ford sent us the F-150 Lightning, and the 24-foot cord of our test unit became a lifesaver, since we could not pull the Lightning into the garage due to its roof height!
We’ve tested multiple Tesla vehicles. All of them loaners from friends, since Tesla doesn’t support the motor press – at all. Using a neighbor’s Tesla, we were able to verify that the Emporia NACS handle will open the Tesla charger door exactly like a Tesla-branded charger does. That’s the coolest trick!
We also verified that the NACS charger from Emporia works splendidly on non-Tesla models.
We just finished up a test of the 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 Limited, which is now equipped with an NACS charger handle. We charged it using the NACS-equipped Emporia, and we also used an adapter to charge it on the J-Plug Emporia. It worked great both ways.
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We’ve test-charged EVs from McLaren, Volvo, Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Genesis, Ford, Chevrolet, Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, Subaru, Honda, Acura, Dodge, Jeep, Kia, and Lexus.
Perhaps the most stunning of all the vehicles we have plugged into our Emporia charger was the 2025 McLaren Artura Spider Supercar (Top of Page Image). This PHEV is among the best automobiles ever built by mankind, and it was right at home charging on the J-Plug Emporia charger. The Dodge Charger Daytona (below) also wowed us.
The Quality Summary – Emporia EV Chargers
After testing many dozen EVs from virtually every brand in America, we can say with confidence that the Emporia charger is a perfect match for every one of them. In all cases, the charger handle, whether it was the J-Plug or the NACS charger, slid perfectly and confidently into place. Both chargers worked as well after years of testing as they did on day one.
We’ve had power outages and power surges strike when charging, and the Emporia units suffered no harm whatsoever. That is mostly fate, but it was good to know that the electronics are robust enough to handle a typical power glitch.
We have a GFCI-protected outlet, and we have zero GFCI trips over the course of all of our testing. Emporia chargers work great on GFCI-protected circuits.
We’re a little ashamed to admit this, but we’ve dropped the handle of the J-plug Emporia charger on the concrete floor more than once. In fact, we dropped it during installation! This was purely accidental, but the handle took the abuse with zero damage of any kind. This equipment is made tough.
We don’t often name “favorites” when we test products. Frankly, we strive to test only high-quality and highly rated products, so most of what we test is exceptional. What we can say is that we’ve tested a LOT of EV chargers over the past few years. Emporia was not the first charger we tested, and Emporia is not the brand from which we have tested the most variety of EV products. However, when we had to choose which charger to leave on the wall for our daily use, it was Emporia’s chargers that we chose to use day in and day out.
Emporia Chargers – Our Long-Term Test Summary
Having tested the Emporia chargers on virtually every EV brand and model, we can confidently report that Emporia chargers don’t just work great the day you install them. Rather, they are just as satisfying to use after many years in service. Our testing is ongoing, and we will report back in a few years if we are still fortunate enough to be testing EVs regularly.
Testing Notes:
1) Emporia supplied us with these chargers at no cost, just as every brand we test does. We offered to return or pass the units on to other reviewers after our initial testing, but Emporia offered to let us keep them for long-term testing.
2) We opted for a NEMA 14-50 outlet for ease of swapping units during our testing. However, we recommend that shoppers hard-wire their units. It’s safer, and with appropriate circuit design, hardwiring allows for more charging power.
John Goreham is the Vice President of the New England Motor Press Association and an expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE int). In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can connect with John on LinkedIn and follow his work on his personal X channel or on our X channel. Please note that stories carrying John’s by-line are never AI-generated, but he does employ grammar and punctuation software when proofreading and he also uses image generation tools.
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Source: torquenews.com
