What_Car_UK_-_August_2020

can be a very slow process. Using a household

socket, it will take around 26 hours to charge

EVs with the biggest battery capacity, such as

the Audi E-tron, from 10-80%.

Having a dedicated wallbox charging point

installed in your garage or on the outside of

your house makes charging easier. The range

of chargers on offer is wide, from simple

3.6kWunitstosophisticated chargers that can

chargeyour car up automatically at the

cheapest time, as well as units that

work with solar panels to power

your home and sell energy

back to the National Grid at

peak times, minimising the

cost of charging.

An important thing

to think about up front

is choosing an approved

home charging point from

a company that’s on the

Government’s approved

list(fi nd out more at

bit.ly/3echR1n). Doing so will

enable the installer to apply for the

Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme (EVHS)

grant on your behalf. It’s worth up to 75% of

the purchase price of a wallbox, with a

maximum contribution of £350.

Next, you need to decide on the wattage of

the wall charger. The slowest, 3.6kW units will

charge a car only slightly faster than a domestic

socket. This is likely to be fi ne if your daily

mileage is low or you own a plug-in hybrid that

doesn’t take long to charge, due to its relatively

small battery. The cost of a 3.6kW wallbox is

around £300 to £450 and you’ll get most of

that back from the EVHS grant.

However, most people opt for a 7kW charger,

which will replenish batteries at twice the rate

of a home socket. A charger with this power

output costs around £850, or around £500

after the EVHS grant.

The third option is a 22kW charger, which

provides much faster charging. It will replenish

the massive battery pack of an Audi E-tron in

around nine hours, compared with 14 hours

using a 7kW charger.

Even if your current EV isn’t able to charge

at this rate, choosing a 22kW charger now will

prepare you for when you change cars in the

future. Because you can only apply for the

wallbox grant once for each EV you own (with a

limit of two), you’d have to foot the entire bill if

you wanted faster charging capability later.

It’s important to check whether your home

whatcar.com^ August 2020^47

Claire Evans

[email protected]

THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC has boosted

the popularity of electric vehicles (EVs). The

improvement in air quality brought about

by the dramatic reduction in traffi c levels

during the UK’s Covid-19 lockdown has made

almost half of people (45%) surveyedby

Venson Automotive Solutions realise

the benefi ts of zero-emissions

motoring and consider going

electric. Of those, 19% said

their next car will be electric

and 26% said they’ll be

switching to an EV in the

next fi ve years. When the

survey was conducted a

year earlier, 31% said they

would buy an EV, but not for

10 to 15 years.

However, EV buyers could

end up paying far too much to

charge the batteries in their new

cars if they don’t do their research up

front. A recent What Car? investigation has

revealed that using the UK’s fastest public EV

chargers can cost almost 10 times more than

charging up at home. We paid £45.89 for a

10-80% 150kW charge for an Audi E-tron at

an Ionity charging station; in comparison,

charging up at home on a night-time tariff of

7 pence per kilowatt hour (kWh) would cost

£4.66. So getting the best home charging set-up

is key to keeping EV running costs down.

Although many slower public chargers are

free to use, they lack the convenience of home

charging; you might have to wait for someone

else to fi nish charging and you’ll need to leave

your car away from home while it’s plugged

in and collect it later. No wonder, then, that

government fi gures show that 80% of EV

owners charge their cars at home. Last year, it

became mandatory for all newly built homes to

have an EV charging point installed, but most

of us don’t live in brand new houses, so we have

to sort out our own charging solutions.

What are the home

charging options?

Although you can simply charge your car using

a standard domestic three-pin socket, this

Fastest public chargers can be very costly to use,

so home charging is preferable for most EV owners

161%

Year-on-year increase

in the number of

electric vehicles sold

in the  rst quarter of

2020, from 7519

to 19,6 3 0.