Electric car

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Can you have a home charger though?

Home chargers with all the flashing lights & stuff are about £1000 including installation, which is spectacularly poor value for money unless you are doing 100+ miles a day, and have a smartmeter, so you can change to an EV tariff and pay about 7p per KWh for 5 hours in the wee hours. (but the cynics, like me, will tell you that having a smart charger and smart meter is making it easy for HMRC to tax every KWh that goes into the car, because the smart meter & charger will snitch you up)

Lots of brand new EVs come with a charger that plugs into a 13A socket (or they are all over eBay, as people who leased an EV keep the included charger and sell them on eBay to make a few £ off their lease deal) , and will slowly charge the car, in 8 hours overnight you can charge enough for 60-70 miles. These only need a  waterproof socket outside- you may have one for your lawnmower already.

(Home "chargers" actually just safely connect the car to the mains, and tell it how much power it can pull from the connection, the actual charger is part of the car- there is very little inside them, which is why I think they are massively overpriced)

You can charge at supermarkets, my Lidl sells electricity at SIXTY TWO PENCE a KWh with a lidl plus card discount, and can charge at 50KW- so under an hour while shopping to spend £25 to £30 on overpriced electricity.

If you are buying an EV to save money on petrol/diesel, you really must have a home charger, I pay 20p a KWh at home, so under a third of what Lidl charge. (but 3x what I could pay, if I shelled out £1000- it would "only" take me 30,000 miles to break even....)

There are also slow chargers at Supermarkets, which are really home chargers, so you won't get much charge in the 2 hours you are allowed on the carpark, but they are under 50p a KWh.

The Plan with an EV is to charge at home, and only pay through the nose for electricity if you go on a 300 mile journey, when you will need to charge up just sufficiently to get home.

 

LightFlare

swjf1q said:

I'm thinking of buying an electric car. I don't have a home charger yet, so i'd need to consider this. But my biggest worry is about running out of battery. 
I can't see any information how you use onstreet electric charges. 
So I was wondering if anyone could help me answer the following questions.

- How to do you use on street charges
- Can you top-up, say a fixed amount. So for example, when i fill my car i put £20 in. 
-How do you know which is the cheapest charges?
- Do you still need to pay for parking when you are charging a car at the car park?

As already asked - why?

The reasoning is very important to the decision and while you might think it’s right for whatever reason - it most definitely can also be wrong for some people

Petriix

Don't worry. You won't run out of charge unless you do something really silly.
How far do you normally drive in a day?
What longer journeys do you do? How far, how often?
Charging away from home is really easy these days. I mostly just use the Electroverse card/app from Octopus and it gets charged to my home electricity bill. 

FarmerHorse

Had a stint driving an electric van and range anxiety melted away after a couple of days. 

It’s not so much a case of considering a home charger, it’s almost a given that home charging is the best way to run an EV. Factor the cost of a home charger into your calculations. 

You say you put £20 of fuel in, taking that at face value that’s about 3 gallons these days so 120 miles range typically, which presumably you’re comfortable with. How would that differ from an EV with a higher range from a full charge? 

Reality is that driving an EV creates a different mindset. If you try to run it like an ICE car you’ll end up getting flustered. After a few cycles of charge & discharge you’ll work it out. 

Your other questions will melt away too. 

Mildly_Miffed

Keep_pedalling said:

born_again said:

So more pertinent information.

How many miles a day do you do?

And if you have a long commute can you charge at work?

Somebody who "puts £20 in" is unlikely to be doing much mileage at all, because they'd just get bored of the wasted time filling up twice a week.

So the realistic answer is that they'll probably be just fine on a 13A three-pin socket at home.

born_again

facade said:

Can you have a home charger though?

Home chargers with all the flashing lights & stuff are about £1000 including installation, which is spectacularly poor value for money unless you are doing 100+ miles a day, and have a smartmeter, so you can change to an EV tariff and pay about 7p per KWh for 5 hours in the wee hours. (but the cynics, like me, will tell you that having a smart charger and smart meter is making it easy for HMRC to tax every KWh that goes into the car, because the smart meter & charger will snitch you up)

Well we payed for ours in 9 months with the saving over petrol costs compared to what we payed in electric to charge the car to do the same miles. Only do 6K a year.

Won't get into granny charger argument. It will only cause a lot of flames.

Jenni_D

I was fortunate with timing and circumstances that I was effectively paid for getting a home charge point. (I made £160 on the transaction, due to car manufacturer contribution and the grants available at the time).

I have an MG4 SE SR which will do from 100 miles (depths of winter, fast motorway driving) to 180+ miles (heights of summer, pootling around) in terms of real driving range. (i.e. down to about 10% state of charge). As I can charge from home (and the battery is LFP chemistry so doesn't mind always being charged to 100%) then I can plug in, leave it overnight and then set off in the morning with a "full tank" - every time. No smelly, dirty fuel pumps to handle, no diesel to slip on or ruin footwear, no hassle standing out in the wind and rain for 5 minutes or so holding said fuel pump nozzle - just plug in at home, lock the car and go in the house.

boobyd

born_again said:

facade said:

Can you have a home charger though?

Home chargers with all the flashing lights & stuff are about £1000 including installation, which is spectacularly poor value for money unless you are doing 100+ miles a day, and have a smartmeter, so you can change to an EV tariff and pay about 7p per KWh for 5 hours in the wee hours. (but the cynics, like me, will tell you that having a smart charger and smart meter is making it easy for HMRC to tax every KWh that goes into the car, because the smart meter & charger will snitch you up)

Well we payed for ours in 9 months with the saving over petrol costs compared to what we payed in electric to charge the car to do the same miles. Only do 6K a year.

Won't get into granny charger argument. It will only cause a lot of flames.

I use a granny,had an outside socket already,for £100 had earth rod installed and socket upgraded to EV charging.
Works fine for me,do my 30/40 miles a day,charge for the 5 hours a night at 9p kwh to top back up,about £1.20.
If I go on longer journeys just plug in on peak hours at 23p kwh to charge back up .
Anything longer ,use Superchargers,what I've saved over the weeks I don't mind the Supercharger cost for the bi monthly long journeys.

facade

born_again said:

facade said:

Can you have a home charger though?

Home chargers with all the flashing lights & stuff are about £1000 including installation, which is spectacularly poor value for money unless you are doing 100+ miles a day, and have a smartmeter, so you can change to an EV tariff and pay about 7p per KWh for 5 hours in the wee hours. (but the cynics, like me, will tell you that having a smart charger and smart meter is making it easy for HMRC to tax every KWh that goes into the car, because the smart meter & charger will snitch you up)

Well we payed for ours in 9 months with the saving over petrol costs compared to what we payed in electric to charge the car to do the same miles. Only do 6K a year.

Won't get into granny charger argument. It will only cause a lot of flames.

It isn't an argument though, it is money saving.

£1000 home charger on EV tariff (because you have no alternative at home already) vs 62p/KWh at supermarket saves 55p/KWh, so payback after 2000KWh or about 8000miles. (and 40 hours waiting at the supermarket for it to charge before you can drive home- no point in comparing the 47p rate, most people can't park at the supermarket long enough to charge fully)

£1000 home charger on EV tariff (because you have no alternative at home already) vs petrol @20p a mile saves approx 18p/mile so payback after 5,500 miles.

£1000 home charger on EV tariff vs using an existing 13A socket on standard tariff (must be rated at 10A continuous) saves 13p/KWh, so payback after 7700 KWH, or around 30,000 miles.

£1000 home charger on standard tariff (because you don't use enough electricity to profit overall) vs existing 13A socket saves nothing, except charging time, and most people could overnight charge sufficiently to last the week then fully charge at weekends.

These figures assume that you can get a 7p/KWh EV tariff for the whole duration of the 30,000 miles (which could be years...), there is no real need for suppliers to keep them once the smart meter roll-out completes and they can simply charge everyone £1/KWh at times that our creaking infrastructure can't handle the load to force people to load shift.

Obviously if you anticipate doing a lot more EV miles than 30,000 a home charger and 7p tariff makes financial sense over charging from a 13A socket, for me personally I may never get to do that many miles before I have to give up driving.

There is also the "free" electricity offered if your car can do vehicle to grid (and you can leave it plugged in at the stipulated times), and "free" electricity from your own solar array that you would need a smart home charger to support, that completely change the figures.

mikrt

Won't get into granny charger argument. It will only cause a lot of flames.

It isn't an argument though, it is money saving.

 But it IS an argument though. On safety grounds, not financial. They are not recommended for anything other than occasional use.