The fire marshal sees this one every winter, and the owners never see it coming.

UL and NFPA have flagged extension cord use as one of the leading causes of EV charging fires in single-family homes. The problem is duty cycle. A vacuum or space heater runs in short bursts. A Level 1 EV charger draws near-maximum current for the entire overnight charge, which turns a slightly undersized cord into a slow-burning fuse.

The math is brutal. A 16-gauge cord at 12 amps for 10 hours dissipates around 60 to 90 watts as heat along its length. Coil that cord on a garage floor or run it under a rug and the heat has nowhere to go. Surface temperatures can climb past 175°F before the plug melts.

Plug the EV directly into a dedicated 15 or 20 amp wall outlet. If the cord won’t reach, install a closer outlet or upgrade to a Level 2 240V circuit. Never use a power strip, never use an indoor extension cord, and never coil any cord while charging.

Even a heavy 12-gauge outdoor cord is a temporary fix, not a solution. The National Electrical Code treats a charging extension cord as a code violation in most installations. [JT256]

Comments:

Gotta have at least a 12 ga wire and preferably a 10 ga

​A current of 30mA passing through the human body can be lethal if it is sustained for several seconds.
​However, modern European 30\text{ mA} RCDs are strictly required to disconnect the circuit incredibly fast—typically in under 40 milliseconds at full rated current.
​At 40 milliseconds, a 30\text{ mA} current is well inside the “Zone AC-3″ of the IEC safety curve. In this zone, you will feel a nasty, painful shock and muscle contraction, but the risk of your heart going into fatal ventricular fibrillation is practically zero. Europe’s philosophy isn’t “prevent you from feeling a shock,” it is “prevent the shock from stopping your heart before the breaker clears.”

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We fear who wired it before us.