> All in it is usually under $1k to get one installed.

Where I'm at (outside of Philly) $1K is the bottom end. Depending on the distance from the panel, access to the garage and the house service it can be lots more. I had mine done (panel on the other end of the house) and it was $2200

It's common but rarely necessary for people to get the largest circuit they can imagine rather than evaluate cost / benefit clearly.

I have a 240v / 20a plug next to my drive way. It cost $300 for the electrician work and $150 for the EVSE. It uses inexpensive romex, didn't require me to beef up my house's 100a service, and 95% of the time recharges the car overnight. On the rare situations where I get home from a long drive late in the evening, with the car under 10%, and drive it the very next morning, the car will have not gotten back to the "normal" charge level, but it's still perfectly usable for 99% of driving requirements... And if I'm in a rare situation where I need to charge it more than I'd get from an overnight drive I can L3 charge it.

Sure, if you're putting 200 miles a day on the car consistently, or if you've got several EVs, or if you've got a huge price difference in your "time of use" power metering contract, having a big pipe between the car and the grid is helpful.

But just as often, spending more than $500 for an EVSE hookup is just not going to be a good way to spend money. Do it if it makes you feel more comfortable, but it's rarely necessary.

Can you plug an EV into a wall outlet? I imagine it will charge extremely slowly, but isn't there a way to do that?

You can, but it's quite slow to charge within the confines an an ordinary outlet.

I have primarily supercharged my 2018 Model S (100kw) over ~140k miles and only have 8% battery degradation.

That assumes the battery degradation number calculation is 1) accurate and 2) isn't lying as to not discourage people without access to regular slow charging from buying their cars.

Provided by a third party, not Tesla.

You mean a third-party is giving you that number? How do they obtain/calculate it? Do they just read a data parameter via the car's diagnostics port? If so the lying argument applies just as well.

And you might have less degradation if you had L2 charged it primarily.

The evidence does not support this when scoped to Tesla battery packs.

https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/impacts-of-fast-charg...