MotorTrend Best Tech 2025: The Autel MaxiCharger AC Lite Home EV Charger Stands Out in a Crowded Segment
Our favorite EV charger has a thin cable and a fantastic app at a great price.
You could buy a home EV charger with the same indifference of picking out a new toothbrush. Like the way that one looks? It will probably get the job done.
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But if you care about the details, the Autel MaxiCharger AC Lite Home stands out thanks to a thin and flexible cable, its range of configurations, and a companion phone app that’s easy on the eyes and easy to use. It’s the winner of a 2025 MotorTrend Best Tech award for home EV chargers for a simple reason: It’s a great product at a great price.
Like buying a car, you have options when buying a MaxiCharger AC Lite. The $399 9.6-kW “entry” model is all the EV charger most people need. It plugs into a NEMA 14-50 wall outlet and connects to the car via the J1772 connector found on non-Tesla EVs. The $569 hardwired version charges faster at up to 12.0 kW and can be ordered with either the J1772 plug or the NACS connector that’s used by Tesla and is slowly being adopted by every other automaker.
All versions include a cable that measures a long 24.6 feet with a thin 0.7-inch diameter. The connector is wrapped in a rubberlike coating that gives it a premium feel compared to the hard plastic handle you’ll find on most chargers. The weathertight wall box can be installed inside or outside and is certified to meet electrical safety standards by CSA, an independent testing laboratory. Cheaper home EV chargers often skip this step, which we consider mandatory for any product we’d recommend. Autel also stands behind the MaxiCharger with a three-year warranty.
Autel Maxicharger AC Lite Home 40-amp/9.6-kW EV Charger (J1772 plug)
Autel Maxicharger AC Lite Home 50-amp/12.0-kW EV Charger (J1772 plug)
Autel Maxicharger AC Lite Home 50-amp/12.0-kW EV Charger (NACS plug)
Many EV charger apps complicate what should be simple tasks, namely tracking your EV’s energy consumption and programming the unit to charge when electricity is at its cheapest. Autel raises the bar with an app that has the look and feel of something created by Apple. The crisp, clean graphics and intuitive interface make it simple to find the information or settings you’re looking for. That makes it easy for nerds like us to track our vehicle’s efficiency with every charge. You can even export your charging history to a spreadsheet for meticulous recordkeeping.
The Autel MaxiCharger AC Lite Home is easy to recommend because it’s so well rounded. The $399 price caters to value buyers—that’s pretty much as low as you can go and still get a quality, safety-certified 240-volt charger. Data junkies will appreciate the app’s clear charts and granular detail. And toothbrush buyers will appreciate that it reliably gets the job done.
2025 MotorTrend Best Tech Home EV Charger Finalists
ChargePoint Home Flex: ChargePoint’s sleek design and minimalist app will be worth the premium price ($550–$599) to some, but considering the Home Flex’s only advantage over the MaxiCharger is aesthetic, most drivers are better off pocketing $150 and going with our Best Tech winner.
Emporia EV Charger: This $399 charger caters to power users with advanced features that can prioritize charging from home solar panels or automatically reduce charging power as needed in homes with outdated electrical service. The cable, however, is noticeably thicker and heavier than many units that provide the same 11.5 kW.
Tesla Wall Connector: As functional as it is attractive, Tesla’s $420 home charger is equipped with the slimmest cable we’ve seen on an 11.5-kW unit. It uses the Tesla-designed NACS connector, which means up until now it's been exclusively targeted at Tesla drivers. That changes this year with the arrival of the 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5, the first non-Tesla vehicle to adopt the plug.
Tesla Universal Wall Connector: The $550 Universal Wall Connecter can charge any EV in America with its NACS connector and integrated J1772 adapter. That said, any home charger can do the same thing with a third-party adapter, and the Tesla adapter is unfortunately tethered to the charging station. Most drivers will be better off buying an adapter they can carry with them for on-the-go top-ups as the charging industry switches to the NACS plug over the next few years.
More 2025 MotorTrend Best Tech Winners
Infotainment • Driver Assistance • Chassis Tech
Powertrain • Automaker App • General Excellence
I fell in love with car magazines during sixth-grade silent reading time and soon realized that the editors were being paid to drive a never-ending parade of new cars and write stories about their experiences. Could any job be better? The answer was obvious to 11-year-old me. By the time I reached high school, becoming an automotive journalist wasn’t just a distant dream, it was a goal. I joined the school newspaper and weaseled my way into media days at the Detroit auto show. With a new driver’s license in my wallet, I cold-called MotorTrend’s Detroit editor, who graciously agreed to an informational interview and then gave me the advice that set me on the path to where I am today. Get an engineering degree and learn to write, he said, and everything else would fall into place. I left nothing to chance and majored in both mechanical engineering and journalism at Michigan State, where a J-school prof warned I’d become a “one-note writer” if I kept turning in stories about cars for every assignment. That sounded just fine by me, so I talked my way into GM’s Lansing Grand River Assembly plant for my next story. My child-like obsession with cars started to pay off soon after. In 2007, I won an essay contest to fly to the Frankfurt auto show and drive the Saturn Astra with some of the same writers I had been reading since sixth grade. Winning that contest launched my career. I wrote for Jalopnik and Edmunds, interned at Automobile, finished school, and turned down an engineering job with Honda for full-time employment with Automobile. In the years since, I’ve written for Car and Driver, The New York Times, and now, coming full circle, MotorTrend. It has been a dream. A big chunk of this job is exactly what it looks like: playing with cars. I’m happiest when the work involves affordable sporty hatchbacks, expensive sports cars, manual transmissions, or any technology that requires I learn something to understand how it works, but I’m not picky. If it moves under its own power, I’ll drive it.
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