Why 32 amps, and not 40 or 48
Three reasons, and they are all about the house rather than the car.
The panel. A load calculation on an older 100- or 125-amp service frequently comes back with room for 40 amps and no room for 60. That single number decides the charger, not the other way round, and it is why our 100-amp panel roundup exists. Thirty-two amps of charging fits inside a 40-amp breaker with the 125% continuous-load margin NEC Article 625 requires; 40 amps of charging does not.
The wire. A 40-amp circuit is typically 8 AWG copper where a 60-amp circuit is 6 AWG. On a short run inside a garage that price difference is trivial. On a long run to a detached garage or across a basement it is not, and it compounds with conduit and labour — our detached garage guide gets into why long runs are not priced linearly.
The car. Some cars cannot use more than 32 amps anyway. A vehicle with a 7.2 kW onboard charger accepts about 30 amps and ignores anything above it, so paying for a 48-amp charger and a 60-amp circuit buys nothing at all. Find your own vehicle's figure before you buy — our onboard charger limits guide shows where it is published, and our 32A vs 40A comparison works through the eight-amp difference in practice.
The thing the listings hide: where the setting lives
Almost every Level 2 charger sold today has some way to reduce its current. They are not equivalent, and on this page the difference is the ranking.
A hardware cap is a physical switch inside the unit. Once it is set, no app, account, firmware update, factory reset or second household member can exceed it. If an electrician signs off on a 40-amp circuit and a 32-amp charger, a hardware cap is how that stays true in three years' time. The cost is that changing it means powering the unit down and opening it.
An app limitis a number in software, usually stored in the manufacturer's cloud. It is far more convenient — you can drop to 24 amps for an evening during peak pricing and put it back at midnight — and it is genuinely enough for most people. But it is a setting rather than a limit, and it is only as reliable as the account that owns it.
An on-unit selector— a button or a rotary step on the charger itself, with no app involved — sits between the two. There is nothing to log into and nothing in a cloud, and it is as easy to change as pressing a button, which cuts both ways. Our guide to what amps to set your charger to covers the mechanics on each type, and our load management roundup is the page for when a fixed limit is not enough and you need the charger to watch the whole house.
What each pick publishes
EVIQO 48A. The only pick that gives you both mechanisms. EVIQO's own page states the two levels of control plainly: DIP switches set the maximum at 16, 32, 40 or 48 amps, and the app then fine-tunes from 6 amps up to that maximum in 1-amp steps. Thirty-two is a named switch position, not an approximation. Around that you get 11.5 kW of headroom you are choosing not to use, a 25 ft cable plus a 40-inch input lead, an IP66 / NEMA-4 enclosure published for -22°F to 122°F, UL, ETL, FCC and ENERGY STAR listings, and a three-year warranty extendable to four. The catch is that it is hardwired only, so you are paying an electrician anyway — which, if you are reading this page because of your panel, you probably are. Our EVIQO 48A review has the full picture and our EVIQO vs ChargePoint comparison settles this exact matchup.
ChargePoint Home Flex. ChargePoint's datasheet publishes app-adjustable output at 16, 24, 32, 40, 48 or 50 amps, so 32 is a documented step rather than a slider position you have to trust. The same datasheet states the rule this page is built on, using its own example: the breaker must be rated for 125% of the maximum load. What you are buying over the EVIQO is the most mature app in the category and a brand that has been in home charging since before it was a category, plus the one flexibility nothing else here offers — ChargePoint also sells a plug-in NEMA 14-50 version of the same charger, which means a 32-amp install on an existing 40-amp circuit without hardwiring. The limit is app-side only; ChargePoint's datasheet describes no hardware cap. Full detail in our Home Flex review.
ELEGRP 40A. The cheapest way to arrive at exactly 32 amps, and it does it without an app, an account or a radio. ELEGRP publishes five current levels — 16, 20, 24, 32 and 40 amps — set on the unit itself, plus a 1-to-12-hour delay timer for off-peak charging, a 25 ft cable, an IP67 body with a published -21°F to 121°F range, ETL certification and a two-year warranty. It is a NEMA 14-50 plug-in, so on an existing 40-amp circuit you want a 14-50 receptacle fitted on that breaker rather than a 50-amp one, and your electrician should know that is the plan. It is also the top pick on our no-Wi-Fi roundup for the same reason it is here: one setting, set once, with nothing to maintain.
Grizzl-E Mini. The portable with a hardware cap. United Chargers publishes a four-position DIP switch at 40, 32, 24 or 16 amps, and the Wi-Fi current slider can never exceed whatever the switch is set to — so 32 is enforceable here as firmly as on the EVIQO, in a unit you can unplug and take with you. It is a UL Type 4 metal case, -22°F to 122°F, 24 ft of cable, three years of warranty and UL file E510712. Two cautions, both from the manufacturer's own manual: it ships set to 40 amps, and the manual states the charger “can not detect the circuit amperage limit”, so turning it down to 32 is your job before the first session. It is also the most expensive unit here, for capacity a 40-amp circuit will not let you use. Our Grizzl-E Mini review leads with exactly that setting.
Autel MaxiCharger Home. The pick for a charger mounted somewhere genuinely hostile. Autel publishes output adjustable across 16 to 50 amps, an IP65 / NEMA 4X enclosure and — the spec that earns it a place — a published operating range of -40°F to 131°F, the widest of anything we cover. It is hardwired, CSA certified and ENERGY STAR listed with a three-year warranty. Note that Autel specifies a 70-amp circuit for its full 50-amp output; at 32 amps you are running it far inside its design envelope, which is a perfectly sensible way to own a charger. It also leads our outdoor roundup.
And a charger that cannot do this at all
Worth naming rather than silently omitting: the Lectron NEXUS J1772 48Ais a good charger and the wrong one for this page. Lectron publishes no adjustable current range for it, which makes it a fixed 48-amp unit requiring a 60-amp circuit — precisely the circuit the readers of this page do not have. The Leviton EV40P has the same problem one tier down: Leviton's page specifies a fixed 40 amps and publishes no adjustable range, so it needs a 50-amp circuit and cannot be fitted to a 40-amp one. A charger's maximum tells you nothing about its minimum.
The verdict
If an electrician has told you 40 amps is what the panel can spare, buy the EVIQO and set the DIP switch to 32. You get a hardware cap that survives app updates and house guests, the longest total cable reach in the group, ENERGY STAR for rebate paperwork, and the option to raise the limit later if you ever upgrade the service. It is the only pick here where the number on your permit and the number in the charger cannot drift apart.
If you want the best app, or you want to avoid hardwiring altogether, buy the ChargePoint — 32 amps is a published step, the plug-in SKU lets you use an existing 40-amp circuit with a receptacle rather than a conduit run, and the software around it is the most mature in the category. Just know the limit lives in an account.
And if you want this to be simple and cheap, buy the ELEGRP. Five levels on the unit, pick 32, fit a 14-50 on the 40-amp circuit, and you are done — no app, no account, no firmware, and the lowest live price on this page. For a household whose car cannot take more than 32 amps anyway, that is not the budget option. It is the right one.
