UK Tesla calculator
Tesla Charge Time Calculator (UK)
How long from 20% to 80%? Pick your charger — 3-pin, 7kW home, DC rapid or Supercharger V3 — and see a realistic time that accounts for the onboard AC limit and DC charging taper, not the headline peak kW.
Your figures
All figures are editable estimates, checked 2026-07-13. We never present a rate as fixed fact — see our sources.
Result
Estimate only — confirm live figures with Tesla and your suppliers.
How this is worked out
Energy needed = usable battery × (to − from)%. Time = energy ÷ effective power. AC charging is capped at the car's ~11 kW onboard limit (so a 22 kW supply doesn't halve the time on a single-phase-limited car); DC rapid/Supercharger uses an average of ~62% of peak to reflect the real charging taper above 50%. Battery sizes checked 2026-07-13.
How the 17m figure above is calculated
Using this page's default inputs — a Model Y Long Range AWD (75 kWh usable), 20% → 80%, on a 250 kW Supercharger V3 — here is every step.
- Work out the energy needed.
kWh = usable battery × (to% − from%)= 75 × (80% − 20%) = 45 kWh added. - Find the effective charging power. DC chargers above 22 kW don't hold their peak rate the whole time, so we average at
62%of the rated power:250 kW × 0.62= 155 kW effective. (A ≤22 kW AC charger is capped at the car's ~11 kW onboard limit instead.) - Divide energy by effective power.
time = kWh ÷ effective kW= 45 ÷ 155 = 0.290 hours = 17m.
Change the model, charge range or charger type above and the same three steps recompute live. Battery sizes checked 2026-07-13. Full list: Methodology & sources.
Why the headline kW is never what you get
A "250 kW" Supercharger will not charge your car at 250 kW for more than a moment, and understanding why is the difference between a plan that works and a stop that runs 20 minutes long. Four things pull the real rate below the number on the sign, and none of them are faults.
- The taper. DC charging is fastest at a low state of charge and slows progressively as the battery fills. Above roughly 50% the rate falls away sharply, and the last 20% is slow enough that it is usually the wrong thing to wait for. This is why the calculator above defaults to 20–80%.
- Battery temperature. A cold pack cannot accept full power. Arriving with a cold battery can cost a large share of the peak rate until it warms — which is why navigating to a Supercharger in the car matters: it lets the car precondition the pack on the way.
- A shared cabinet. Some stalls pair up and split power between two cars. Pulling in next to an occupied stall can halve your rate when the site is busy, and moving to an isolated stall sometimes fixes it instantly.
- Your car's own ceiling. Different models and battery packs accept different maximum rates. The charger is often not the limiting factor at all.
The AC trap: your wallbox is rarely the bottleneck
This one costs people real money because they buy the wrong hardware. On AC — home and most destination charging — the limit is the car's onboard charger, not the supply. Fitting a 22 kW unit to a car with an 11 kW onboard limit does not halve your charging time; it just means the unit idles at 11 kW.
And in most UK homes the practical ceiling is lower still, because a single-phase supply caps you around 7 kW regardless of what either device could do. Before paying for a bigger wallbox, check two numbers: your car's onboard AC limit, and whether your property actually has three-phase. If either says no, the extra capacity is unusable.
What actually shortens a long journey
Counter-intuitively, not charging to a high percentage. Because the taper punishes the top of the pack, two shorter stops at a low state of charge frequently beat one long stop — you spend your time in the fast part of the curve twice instead of the slow part once.
Three habits do more than any charger choice: arrive lower than you think you need to, let the car precondition by navigating to the charger rather than typing the postcode into your phone, and leave when the rate drops rather than when the percentage looks tidy. In winter, add margin for all of it — a cold pack both charges slower and uses more energy per mile, so the two effects compound on the same trip.
The calculator above already accounts for the AC onboard cap and applies an average share of peak power on DC to reflect the taper. It cannot know your battery temperature, whether your stall is shared, or how busy the site is — so treat its output as a good planning figure and expect real stops to vary around it, usually upward in cold weather.
Questions
How long does a Tesla take to charge on a 3-pin plug?
A very long time — a 3-pin plug delivers only ~2.3 kW, so a 20–80% top-up can take well over a day on a bigger battery. It's fine as an occasional backup, but a 7 kW home charger is far more practical.
Why doesn't a Supercharger charge at its full 250 kW the whole time?
The rate tapers as the battery fills to protect it, so peak power only holds for the lower part of the charge. That's why we average the effective DC power rather than using the headline figure.