Last updated on February 3rd, 2023 at 10:37 am
But once you’ve chosen what kind of charger to use – AC or DC, and how fast – you will be met with a veritable cacophony of choices. While sometimes you will just have to take what is available, at other times you will have numerous brands to choose from. If you’re browsing on a service such as Zap-Map to see what’s available on your route or at your destination, there could well be lots of tempting icons denoting possibilities in the vicinity.
The Zap-Map live map is a good place to start, because it will show if there are multiple reports of a particular charger being broken. However, this is user-generated and has its limits. If a charger isn’t used very often, it could be listed as fine when actually it doesn’t work. Likewise, if a whole bank of chargers is broken, only one of them might have been updated with this status. For peace of mind, it is often better to stick to the most dependable networks.
With so many options, it might look hard to decide which to choose. However, Zap-Map’s annual survey gives you a great overview of the most popular EV networks according to drivers themselves. The three networks rated most highly, and recipients of the coveted “EV Driver Recommended” badge, are InstaVolt, MFG EV Power and Osprey (which was known as Engenie a few years ago). Bottom of the list are the original Ecotricity Electric Highway, Charge Your Car and bp pulse, but we’ll get into these in more details a bit later in this feature.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that there can be a huge variance in per-kWh costs for charging, much more so than the difference in per-litre prices of petrol. Some charge points can even be free, either because they are on “free vend” due to a fault or are being used as incentive. Other chargers can cost as much as 80p per kWh.
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