Route 1 — One charger, moved between cars. Cost: nothing.
Genuinely the right answer for more households than admit it. One Level 2 charger, a cable long enough to reach both parking spots, and whoever is emptier gets it tonight. Most EVs let you set a charge limit and a schedule, so you can top one car to 80% and switch.
The two things that make this work or fail are cable length and where the charger is mounted. Measure from the proposed charger position to the charge port of each car as they actually park, and buy for the longer distance plus slack. Mounting between the two bays rather than at one end frequently turns an impossible reach into an easy one. A 25 ft cable covers a two-car garage from a central position in most layouts.
Fails when: both cars regularly arrive near empty and leave early, or one driver keeps unusual hours, or nobody will reliably swap the plug. Those are real reasons — but check that they are your reasons before spending.
Route 2 — Power sharing. Cost: a second charger, one circuit.
This is the answer most two-EV households should actually buy, and the one least understood. Power sharing (some brands call it load sharing or power management) lets two compatible chargers sit on a single circuitand negotiate between themselves — each takes a share while both cars are plugged in, and whichever is still charging when the other finishes takes the full circuit.
Why that matters financially: the expensive part of a two-charger install is almost never the second charger. It is the second circuit— the breaker space, the conduit run, and in older houses the panel or service upgrade that a second 50A branch triggers. Power sharing skips all of it. Both cars are plugged in every night, nobody moves a cable, and the electrician runs one circuit.
The Wallbox Pulsar Plusis our pick here specifically because it publishes this capability, and it is by a wide margin the smallest unit in its class — which matters when you are hanging two of them on one garage wall. The Pulsar Plus review covers what you trade for that size. Confirm the feature and the exact model pairing with the manufacturer before ordering: power sharing works between specific units, not between any two chargers of the same brand.
Our load management guide covers the wider family of techniques this belongs to, including load-managed chargers that throttle themselves against the whole house rather than just each other.
Route 3 — Two chargers, two circuits. Cost: the most.
The straightforward answer, and the right one when both cars genuinely need a full charge on the same schedule — two long commutes, or a household where one car is a large-battery truck that arrives empty.
Before you commit, get a load calculation. Two 40A chargers means two 50A circuits, which is 100A of continuous-rated load added to a service that also runs a range, an air conditioner and a dryer. Many panels will not take that without an upgrade, and a service upgrade routinely costs more than both chargers together. That single quote is what pushes most households back to route 2. Our installation cost guide covers what drives it.
If you go this way, the Emporia Level 2is our value pick for the second charger: it starts on a NEMA 14-50 plug at 40A and converts to hardwired higher output later, so you can install the cheaper circuit now and revisit. And there is no rule that both chargers must match — a capable unit for the car that needs it and a cheaper one for the car that does not is a perfectly sensible split.
Route 4 — One wall charger plus a portable. Cost: least of the two-unit options.
The underrated compromise. Keep your existing wall charger for the primary car, and buy a portable 40A unitfor the second. Plug it into a NEMA 14-50 outlet — which is a far cheaper thing to have installed than a hardwired charger circuit, and useful for other purposes — and it delivers exactly the same rate as a wall-mounted 40A charger, because it is one.
The Lectron 40A Portable does this well and then keeps earning: it packs into the trunk for trips where the destination has an outlet and no charger. Our road-trip guide covers that second job, and our NEMA adapter guide covers running one from a dryer or welder outlet you may already have.
The caution: if both cars charge simultaneously on separate circuits, you are back to a real load question, so this route works best when the two cars charge on different nights or the outlet is on a circuit with headroom.
How to choose in one paragraph
If both cars can charge on alternate nights, buy one good charger with a long cable and stop. If they must both plug in nightly but your panel is tight, buy power sharing— it is the answer this problem actually has. If both need full charges simultaneously and your panel can feed it, run two circuits. And if you already own one charger and just need to cover a second car cheaply, a portable on an outlet does the job for the least money. In every case, get the load calculation before you buy anything: it is the number that decides which of these four you can afford, and it costs a service call.
