Would be interesting if that is now true. I know that I bought the Emporia because I could not change the rate in either the Tesla Gen2 wall charger or the new Cadillac Lyriq. In the Emporia app, I can change to any amp rate I want, whenever I want, all from my phone. Not all EVSE’s allowed me to do that then, but that was over a year ago - so maybe things have changed since I was shopping.
In a lot of EVSE chargers there are switches you can set to control the rate of charge so you don't exceed the capacity of the circuit or your panel's capacity. With the Emporia software controls the rate of charge. Think of it as software switches. There are still communications between the charger and the vehicle but that doesn't limit the charger's ability to communicate or act as a "smart device" vs a "dumb" device. I like that with Vue in my electrical panels I can monitor all my circuits, load shed to extend the run time of my batteries if the utility power fails (including reducing or shutting off charging in a power failutre), get reporting daily and monthly into Home Assistant about charge rates and consumption for all the circuits in my house, and a whole lot more. For the flexibility I gained the cost was minimal to go with the Emporia solution vs some of the other options on the marke, and since I've had it installed I've added to the original installation. I also have to say their customer support has been above and beyond. I had a part fail outside warranty and they still replaced the device at no cost to me, their support is US based and knowledgeable about their products. NO I don't work for them, I'm just very happy with their products.
Yes, the EVSEs can all throttle the rate by sending that simple PWM signal, and are dumb devices. The fact that they added wifi and an app is just frosting; the EVSE itself is still a very dumb device with ultra simple signaling.
Definitely can, I've installed two of them.
It's a legal requirement that a circuit has to be sized to 125% of whatever the EVSE can put out at maximum. Therefore, as a practical matter, all mounted EVSEs include switches or a coded installer setting to set that, so you can use existing, smaller circuits. This is both in the NEC and UL. The end user software control CANNOT be the limiter for this legal requirement. Software control can only go DOWN from the fixed limit.
