The JuiceBox smart EV charger is one of the best Level 2 home chargers available on the market.
It is the second generation of the JuiceBox charger.
Overall Rating: 4.6 out of 5.0
The Enel-X JuiceBox charger is the second generation JuiceBox charger. Around 2014, a little startup in California called eMotorWerks developed the JuiceBox, the first smart charger available anywhere.
It was a great unit and got popular quickly. The company blew up in 2017. A giant utility that’s headquartered in Italy called Enel-X bought eMotorWerks.
What they did was promptly redesign the JuiceBox to come out with the second generation.
The second-generation JuiceBox EV charger has been available for a while on the market.
The first generation JuiceBox didn’t have a connector holster or integrated cable management system. It was just the unit, and it had a separate connector holster.
You could mount it anywhere on the wall, and you don’t have to have it right at the unit.
The second-generation JuiceBox EV charger has the cable management system and the integrated connector holster, that is, connector holster built into the unit.
If you want to locate the connector holster somewhere else, you can get a little plastic one to make it.
Major Features of JuiceBox Charger
Now that we’ve covered the minor differences between these two generations of JuiceBox EV charger. Let’s take a look at some main features of the second-generatino JuiceBox now.
Power and Weatherproof Rating
Power Output
The JuiceBox charger is now available in three different power levels: a 32-amp unit which can deliver 7.6 kilowatts of the electric car; a 40-amp unit that can deliver 9.6 kilowatts; a 48-amp unit that can deliver up to 11.5 kilowatts of the EV.
| Plugs | Circuit rating (A) | Maximum power delivery to the EV (A) | Voltage （V） | Maximum power delivery to the EV (kW) |
| NEMA 14-50 | 40 | 32 | 240 | 7.6 |
| 50 | 40 | 240 | 9.6 | |
| NEMA 14-60 | 60 | 48 | 240 | 11.5 |
The JuiceBox 40 needs to be on a 50-amp dedicated circuit.
There’s an 80 rule by the NEC code. So if this is going to deliver 40 amps, it has to be on a circuit. That’s 125 of what it’s going to deliver. That would be 50 amps.
So if you had a JuiceBox 32, that would need to be on a dedicated 40-amp circuit.
If you had a JuiceBox 48, you would need a dedicated 60-amp circuit.
The JuiceBox 32 and the JuiceBox 40 come in plug-in versions as standard. The JuiceBox 48 has to be hardwired, so you don’t have the option to plug it in.
You could always do that yourself and install a NEMA 14-60 outlet as well as put on a dongle with a NEMA 14-60 plug, but that would be on you, and if you do decide to do that, we urge you to have your qualified electrician do that.
One of the good things about the JuiceBox charger is that the power is adjustable, so even if you bought the JuiceBox 40 and you only had a 40-amp circuit, you could throttle down the power delivery within the app.
You might ask why you wouldn’t just get the JuiceBox 32 EV charger.
If you’re only on a 40-amp circuit, it’s fine. But in the future, when you’re thinking about upgrading the circuit to deliver more power, you don’t have to worry about buying a new charger if you have the higher power JuiceBox charger already.
Energy Star Certified
This EV charger is Energy Star Certified for efficiency. Not many electric car chargers currently are Energy Star Certified. So that’s another plus for the JuiceBox charger.
Weatherproof Rating
The rating for the exterior enclosure of the charger, like the original one, is NEMA 4X rated, which is very good. That means it can withstand even the worst blowing rainstorms and snowstorms.
If you live in a hurricane area or up in Canada where you get these crazy blowing snowstorms, you might want to consider a NEMA 4X unit like the JuiceBox.
You can even blast this directly with a garden hose and water will not get into the enclosure. It gives you an extra level of protection.
Construction and Durability
Weight and Dimension
The JuiceBox charger weighs 16 lb, and the dimensions are 7.6 inches wide by 18.6 inches high by 5.6 inches deep.
Connector
The JuiceBox charger uses the universal J1772 connector. The J1772 connector will work on every EV on the market in North America except for Tesla.
However, the EV charger will charge any Tesla model just fine with the J1772 to Tesla adapter.
But if you have any car other than Tesla, the connector will simply just plug into the car and charge it without the need of any kind of adapter as far as the connector that Enel-X uses for the JuiceBox chargersis with high quality. It’s a nice robust connector that lasts long.
Connector Holster
It’s not easy to holster the connector. It would be better if the company redesigns this a little bit to make it a little bit easier to put the connector into it and lock it.
Locking System
Enel-X has a really good feature on the JuiceBox charger that most other chargers do not have. In fact, very few EV chargers come with this good feature – locking system.
The JuiceBox EV charger comes with a key locking system that you can lock the unit to a bracket physically, so nobody can steal it.
You might have your charger mounted outside, or live in a condo complex, where other people are exposed to the EV charging station. The Enel-X JuiceBox allows you to lock the unit with the key.
In that case, nobody can steal it or at least they can’t steal it easily. Some of the other units simply just hang on the wall and since they’re plugged in, you could just unplug them, unhook them and run away with them.
This cannot happen to the JuiceBox charger because of the key locking system.
Cable Length and Pliability
The Enel-X JuiceBox charger comes with a 25 -foot cable as standard, like the Wallbox Pulsar Plus charger. It is actually the longest cable that is allowed by NEC code. You won’t find a level 2 charger with a longer cable than this.
The cable is a little thicker, heavier and a little less pliable than some of the competitors, such as the ChargePoint Home Flex charger and the Tesla wall charger.
The JuiceBox charger cable is a little bit more plasticky rather than rubberized and it’s a little bit harder to bend. It performs badly at the room temperature, not even under the cold weather.
Plug-in and Hardwired
The JuiceBox charger comes with a NEMA 14-50 plug. You can both plug it in and hardwire this unit. It’s very easy to install. We recommend that you hire a licensed electrician to hardwire the charger.
The JuiceBox is built very solidly. Even if it’s plastic and not metal, it’s very thick and it may be one of the well built units on the market currently.
Smart Charger
A dumb (or Non-smart) charger is an electric car charger that you plug your car in and it charges your EV. That’s really basically what you want an EV charger to do.
However, there are other things that smart chargers can do to make the ownership experience a little bit better. Let’s go over the smart charging of the JuiceBox charger.
Control and Monitoring
First of all, after installing your JuiceBox charger, you need to download the JuiceBox app and connect your device to your Wi-Fi and then pair it with your app. Once you do that, you can see things, like
– The current charging of the vehicle;
– How long it’s been charging;
– You can start and stop a charging session;
– You could see the real-time power delivery to your vehicle;
– You get to see past charging sessions;
– How long the car charged for how much energy it took.
With that, you can really see exactly how much your car is costing you every month to charge, unlike gasoline cars where you know how much it costs you, because you get a receipt or you see it on the gas pump yourself.
When you plug your electric car in at home and it charges overnight, you really don’t know how much you just spent on charging your car, but with an app like what the Enel-X JuiceBox charger offers, you get to see exactly what it cost you, so you could see exactly what your electric car cost you per month.
Reminders and Notifications
It can send you notifications. You can set the JuiceBox app to say,” Hey, at 10 o’clock, if i’m not plugged in, send me a message to remind me to plug in”.
That’s a good feature for first-time EV buyers, especially when you first get your electric car and you’re not used to plugging the car in every day.
Automatic Restart
The EV charging station has an automatic restart function. If you have a power outage while your car is charging and after the power is restored, the JuiceBox charger will begin to deliver power to your vehicle again as long as your vehicle accepts it.
Amazon Alexa and Google Home Compatible
The JuiceBox charger is Amazon Alexa and Google Home Compatible, which is also a very good feature to have. So if you have Amazon Alexa, you can say,” Hey Alexa, start charging my electric car or hey Alexa, how many miles of range did I add in this charging session.”
Alexa can connect to Google Home assistant. Many people might not go into that, but some people really appreciate that the EV charger can work with both of those systems.
Being able to Participate In Utility Demand Response Programs
The JuiceBox charger can also work with Utility Demand Response Programs, while there aren’t very many of them out there just yet, but they are coming.
There are more and more getting added every year. That’s basically where you make a deal with your utility, and you give them access to your charger remotely.
In the middle of summer, the utility demand is very high and everybody has their air conditioners on. When you come home at night, if you plug in, you’ll get a notification “do you mind if I start charging your car at midnight, not now or at six o’clock at night” and you’ll either say yes or no.
If you need to go out that night, and want to start the car charging right now, and you say, “no, I need it to charge right now.” The car will start charging.
But if you don’t have to drive the car until the morning. The utility gives you favorable rates if you make your car start charging at midnight. Sometimes it can save you a lot of money in doing so.
So being able to participate in these Demand Response Programs might not be a really big deal today, but it’s going to be in the coming years. It could save you money down the road.
Power Share Capable
Another thing that the JuiceBox charger has is it can share power. That’s an important feature. Because more and more people are getting the second EV.
What power-sharing does is it allows two JuiceBoxes chargers to work on one circuit. You may only have the capacity to add one 50-amp circuit in your house because the service panel is full.
You don’t want to cost thousands of money to upgrade the service.
Now you’ve got two EVs, so you can get a second JuiceBox charger, and connect them together.They’ll talk to each other and they won’t overload the circuit.
They’ll charge one car first. When one EV is finished charging, the second EV starts charging.
Therefore it saves your money on either having to do a full upgrade or buying two chargers that are very low-powered and always charging the car slowly.
Safety Certified and Warranty
Safety Certified
The JuiceBox is safety certified. It’s UL listed.
Warranty
The JuiceBox comes with a three-year warranty for normal residential use, which is pretty much the standard for quality electric car chargers.
TIPS
The JuiceBox charger is capable of charging any EV in North America, non-Tesla and Tesla vehicles (charge with a J1772-Tesla adapter).
Overall, the JuiceBox 40 is a very cost-effective EV home charger. The features of power share capability and NEMA 4X weatherproof rating highlight the charger.
Check here for Tesla home charger!
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