State of Charge reviewed the CleverCharge Home, a Wi-Fi-connected level 2 charger made by Danlaw that ships with a small OBD2 dongle called the CleverKey. Plug the key into your car's diagnostic port, pair it through the app, and the charger gains access to information that most home chargers cannot read: real-time state of charge, battery state of health, diagnostic fault codes, and actual driving patterns over time. The 40-amp plug-in version (NEMA 14-50) sells for $399. The 48-amp hardwired version costs $449. Both carry a 3-year warranty, Energy Star certification, and a UL50E Type 4 enclosure rating. Tom Moloughney ran the unit through cold weather, extreme heat, and automatic restart tests and came away with 4.2 out of 5 stars for the 40-amp version and 4.35 stars for the 48-amp hardwired unit.
The OBD2 approach is what separates the CleverCharge from everything else at this price point. Standard home level 2 chargers have no idea what state of charge your vehicle is at when you plug in, because the communication protocol that DC fast chargers use to read vehicle battery data does not extend to AC home charging hardware. The CleverKey bridges that gap. From the app, you can see your battery's state of health as a percentage, view charge estimates calibrated to your actual driving style rather than EPA figures, and receive alerts that factor in whether you actually need to charge tonight based on tomorrow's predicted mileage. For a fleet operator or a household with multiple vehicles at multiple locations, the multi-vehicle and multi-location tracking is a genuinely useful feature. The app can manage several chargers and several vehicles simultaneously and surface the data in one view. One limitation worth flagging: the CleverKey does not work with Rivian vehicles or with Tesla models made before 2026.
The hardware held up well in testing. At -12°F after a 24-hour freeze, the 18.6mm cable remained pliable enough to handle without major difficulty, and the connector survived five drops from waist height onto concrete with only minor cosmetic compression on the plastic locking tab. In the heat test at 123°F surface temperature with a heat lamp running for two hours during a full-power charging session, the unit delivered its rated 40 amps without derating. It passed the automatic restart test without difficulty after a simulated power interruption. What the review found less convincing was the AI feature set in single-vehicle home use. The public charging cost comparison uses regional averages rather than actual session prices, which produced notably inaccurate estimates in practice. The charger knows the vehicle's state of charge through the CleverKey but does not use that data to stop charging at a set limit, a feature the reviewer identified as a meaningful gap that Danlaw has indicated is on the roadmap. Power sharing between multiple units and dynamic household load management are also absent for now.
Bottom line: The CleverCharge Home is a solid first product from a company that picked a genuinely interesting angle: bridging the data gap between home charging and the vehicle itself. The hardware is reliable, the OBD2 integration works, and the battery health visibility alone is something most EV owners have never had access to through a home charger. The AI features are not yet pulling their weight for typical home users. If Danlaw adds charge limit control via the app and fixes the public charging cost comparison, the score goes up. Right now it is a good charger with a compelling idea that is not fully finished.