What J1772 is, and why a conversion cares

You skip the inlet because a pair of Andersons is cheaper and you are in a hurry. One day you plug 240 V into that guess. You do not know if the wall is live until something arcs, or until someone grabs the pins. That is the feeling this standard exists to kill.

J1772 is the plastic coupler on almost every US EV that charges from AC at home. One end is the handle. The other is the inlet on the car. It is not “the charger.” The charger lives on the vehicle. The J1772 path is how the station and the car agree it is safe to put mains on the pins. A seated handle can take power. A squeezed latch is supposed to kill that power before the pins slide. If you skip a real inlet, you are guessing when 240 V is live. That is not a vibe. That is how people get hurt.

The station is the EVSE: the box on the wall, or the portable brick. It turns AC on and off. The inlet is on the car. A home conversion needs that inlet, not a board sold as a “J1772 controller” that is actually the wall side. See /learn/j1772-controllers-home-conversion.

Once you care about how many amps the station is advertising, that is PWM. Numbers: /learn/j1772-pilot-proximity-pwm. Pack, cable, fuse: /learn/pack-planning.

What people get wrong, usually in this order: they call the inlet the charger. They wire a wall-side board into the car. They treat the handle as a dumb extension cord. The last one is how you get a live connector in your hand.

If you want bench depth, go to the PWM note.