Receptacle, Single, 50A, 14-50R, 250V, Black

I bought this Hubbell 14-50 outlet after my Leviton melted after two years of charging. The pic of the melted outlet is the Leviton 14-50, the new one next to it is the replacement Hubbell 14-50. Some background. Semi-permanent new install, using a wall mount Leviton 40A 240V charging box (also branded as Bosch as I've noticed). Car is a Kia Soul EV+, which takes in max 6.6kW (almost 30A), and fully charges from zero to full (about 30 kWH) in four and a half hours. I usually charge the car for a two hours or less, since I don't drive that much. The 14-50 cable was plugged in only ONCE, and never unplugged, as it is a big wall unit. After two years of getting really hot the plastic part around one of the terminals melted, and the wire disconnected. I never saw or smelled, or felt any smoke, fire, or anything wrong. It was just one day the charger didn't turn on. Looked around, and saw what you see in the pics. Thankfully, house didn't catch on fire and the Leviton charging box is still OK. -The Leviton outlet is cheap. It uses just a single phillips head screw to tighten down the cable into a galvanized stamped U-shaped piece of steel, and I tightened down the 6 gauge wires as much as I possibly could. Can't put much torque on a phillips, as it just cams out. Also, the outlet prongs for the 14-50 plug are half length, galvanized steel. Very little contact, very cheap, and prone to overheating. -The Hubble uses a 5/16 allen head screw that tightens down a solid copper V-shaped block onto another copper block. Good conductive material, well thought out design. Much superior to the Leviton, but the price shows it. Seeing the melted plastic, I opted for the best possible because I didn't want to take chances on......my house/car. Sorry, but no amount of money saved is worth catastrophic risk. -The breaker never tripped, because it wasn't using that much current (not nearly the 50A needed to trip). Just got too hot, under the amount needed to trip the circuit, but way too hot, and slowly melted over time. -The wires were fine except for the part that plugged into the Leviton. I had to replace the wires because they had burnt plastic coating them. I took the time to replace all the wires because, might as well. -The Hubbell is about twice as heavy as the Leviton. -The Leviton was about $11.00 from the HarDware store. Hubbell was about eight times that from Amazon. -Using a temp sensor, the Hubbell got as much as 95 degrees F hot, but probably lower than the Leviton did. I didn't know it was melting until it was too late, but I imagine the temps were much hotter than 95. -Don't buy or use Leviton 14-50 outlets for your EV charging. It might work for a while, maybe even two years like mine, but eventually the plastic will melt and look like mine did. It probably works for ovens or dryers, which it was made for.

After spending more than $50K on your Tesla, do not trust your house and vehicle to a cheap Home Depot NEMA 14-50 outlet. The problem with the cheaper outlets is that the wire clamping is not as secure, and the plug connectors don't fully connect to the entire plug with. This means the cheaper outlets are subject to wearing down from plugging and unplugging, as well as to fires and melted parts due to the stress of fully loaded charging. Do yourself a huge favor, and protect your car and house with this Tesla approved, industrial quality outlet. I have it hooked up with 6 AWG wires. I only pull the plug out when I need the charger for trips, about once every month or two. But, it's super solid to unplug and plug the charger. Tip: The size of the outlet is larger than the cheap ones, so you'll an outlet cover with a larger hole. Look for the Hubbell SS701 or another with 2 31/64 inch hole diameter.

I bought my first Tesla in 2018 and did not understand the importance of installing an industrial grade NEMA 14-50 plug. At the time, the issue seemed to be about inserting and extracting the plug, and since I did not plan on doing this often, I did not object to my electrician installing a Leviton plug. Fast forward to 2023 and I am on my 2nd Tesla. I started to get a warning from the mobile charging that the plug was overheating and the amperage was automatically reduced by the car to prevent a problem. I purchased this Hubbell 9450A plug and replaced the Leviton plug myself. The Leviton plug had obvious heat damage around one of the wire connections. This Hubbell 9450A plug has a different wire clamping mechanism. The Leviton clamps at 25 in/lb; the Hubbell clamps at 75 in/lb. I used a 1/4 inch socket torque wrench to make sure I had the wires clamped to spec. 75 in/lb was tighter than I would have expected if I had been just tightening by feel. This plug will also require a Hubbell wall plate since the socket is a little larger than a standard household NEMA 14-50. I am going to try a TayMac MM2420C 2 gang waterproof outlet cover to protect the plug further, even though my installation is in the garage and will not be exposed to the elements.

You can probably construct 2 of the regular big box store versions out of the materials used to manufacture this one. The price is way over what it should be but Hubble is a main manufacturer for several other brands so you are stuck if you want the best because there isn't any actual competitors. I am using this for both a 40 amp rated EV charger and with a convertor for 2 20 amp outlets for clean dedicated power. Be sure you use a torque wrench and completely seat the wires properly. The wire I am using is southwire mc 6 gauge rated at 90 degree C on a 50 dual pole amp breaker. Because of the depth of this outlet and the wiring used, I purposely used an extension ring to give the outlet plenty of space along with allowing the wires not to be smushed or stressed when attaching the outlet to the box. Make sure you use outlet mounting screws that don't rely just on the threads of the extension ring but make it back to the main box. I wanted a cover to protect the outlet when not being used. You will have to use a dremel to make the opening much bigger to accommodate this outlet's diameter. When pushing 40 amps for several hours the outlet barley warms.

This solved my Tesla "high temperature" alerts on a 5 yr old Leviton plug. The Leviton only have half coverage of the pins compared to this device with full coverage. It's a tight fit for a standard 4" box so I got the Hubbell 8257 4-11/16" box. But the ears on the 14-50 receptacle don't line up with the larger box. You'll need to get a "4-11/16 SQ COVER 2 DEVICE 1/2"RAISED" (both available at home centers) which will also give a little more depth. You can then attach the Hubbell 313292 faceplate (which you need because it's larger in diameter than standard plugs) with the 4 supplied screws but as others have reported, the screws don't have hardly any holding strength so don't tighten too much or you'll have to tap larger screws. In retrospect I could have gone with a RACO 888 4-11/16 coverplate which has the 2-5/8 hole which looks like should fit the 8257 box. You just don't get the fancy stainless steel cover plate. You need to torque wires to 75 lb-in / 8.5 N-m. Too little and you'll get high temps. Too much and you can crack the receptacle. You can get a torque screwdriver on Amazon. But I cobbled together a digital torque adapter and 3/16 hex bit which I already had - more expensive but more useful in the long run if you do automotive work.

This is Tesla's recommend plug. Turns out the home improvement store grade $10 outlets tend to fail as they are meant to be installed behind an oven and plugged in once. If you intend on plugging in to this outlet frequently you need to invest in a good industrial grade outlet. There is substantial heft to this thing compared to its cheaper counterparts. Installation isn't a breeze though. It's deep, much deeper than others and it barely fit in to my existing box with a deeper mud ring added. Getting 6 gauge wire to cooperate in a box is no easy task. The wire strip gauge is quite a lot deeper though than others I've used. I draw 32 amps through this continuously for a few hours and this stays very cool to the touch. I bought it open box and received a brand new outlet with all accessories, just not in the original box. Update: Tesla no longer lists any specific outlet, just "industrial grade". Their older manuals for the mobile connector did suggest this model and a particular Cooper.

The Hubbell 240v outlets are MUCH more robust than almost all the other brands, because they are able to handle a CONTINUOUS LOAD. The other brands - almost to a model - can handle intermittent use only. EV charging is considered a continuous load, unlike ovens or dryers. And please use copper wire, NOT aluminum, even if aluminum satisfies code. Aluminum expands and contracts too much for this continuous, relatively high amperage circuit needed. (A high reliability circuit breaker such as Square D is recommended too.)

I originally had a Leviton 14-50 outlet installed. These outlets are cheap and are not meant to have 8kw ran through it for hours on end. I started getting an error in the car saying that the outlet was getting warm. I got Tesla to swap my charger and adapter but the error persisted. I emailed my electrician and he insisted that it wasn't the outlet. But of course I did my research and got this Hubbell outlet, i installed it myself. The only difficult part was fitting the wires and outlet into the recepticle box, i slowly Bent th wires and made it fit. I started charging and left it there for hours and never had a single error or heating problem on the outlet. I even unplugged it and the contacts weren't warm. So that tells me that the current is properly flowing and I'm not wasting energy as heat. DO NOT BUY A CHEAP 14-50 OUTLET FOR YOUR EV. Spend the $60-$90 on a premium outlet.