Last updated on February 3rd, 2023 at 10:37 am
Introduction
Range anxiety is one of the top reasons why those who haven’t taken the EV plunge yet are still reluctant to do so. If you charge at home and never go further than half your EV’s range on any journey, this won’t be an experience you ever have. The problem arises if you don’t have home charging or regularly do longer trips. Then you will need to contend with the UK’s public charging network, which is patchy at best, and often beyond frustrating. In this guide, we provide some tips about which networks are the best to use, and the common pitfalls to avoid.
Know Your Charger Types and Speeds
If you’re a new EV owner, the first thing you should familiarise yourself with is the types of plugs and charging speeds available, as well as your own car’s capabilities. Our previous Part 1 guide provides a detailed explanation of the differences between CHAdeMO, Type 2 or CCS and AC or DC charge rates. In a nutshell, almost all new EVs now have CCS connections, which combine a Type 2 plug for AC charging with a larger connector that includes this but provides a couple of extra pins for much faster DC charging.
A few older EVs used Type 1 for AC, and the Nissan Leaf is still forging its own way with CHAdeMO for DC charging, for the time being. But the connector war in Europe is essentially over and CCS won. Although, as we already said, this combines two different plugs for AC and DC, most cars will come with a Type 2 cable and a “granny” charger (for plugging into a domestic 13A supply) that will allow owners to use most Type 2 AC options. Because DC cables are designed to cope with much higher wattages, they are built into the chargers themselves. Make sure you head out with your car’s Type 2 cable, though.
The next thing you will want to consider is what kind of charge your car actually needs. If you’re parking up for a few hours – perhaps going shopping, for an evening meal, or to the gym – an AC charger may be available near your destination and perfectly sufficient. Municipal car parks have been installing these, they are available on some city streets, and supermarkets have been adding them to parking areas too. Hotels are also offering AC chargers, including Tesla Destination Chargers, for guests to use. Since you’re staying overnight, you don’t necessarily need to back up to full capacity in 30 minutes. Local street chargers fit into this category as well.
However, faster DC chargers are also being added to some destinations like fast food outlets and coffee shops, as an incentive to customers who want to be in and out as fast as possible. This is also the preferable type to use when frequenting one of the new charging hubs that are starting to emerge, such as Osprey’s hub in Croydon or the GRIDSERVE electric forecourt in Braintree. Alternatively, on a long journey, a DC rapid charger at a service station will be the preferable option.
Which is the Best Charging Network?
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.
Street Charging: The Home Overnight Option
For those who don’t have home charging, the UK’s slowly improving network of street chargers is starting to provide a viable alternative. Some of these are barely better than a “granny” charger, delivering 3-4kW. More potent ones offer 5-6kW, and the best ones are 7kW like a regular home wallbox.
For example, CityEV street chargers frequently only offer 3kW, similar to the best 13A “granny” chargers, although the company also offers units up to 22kW at some locations. At 3kW they will take many hours to charge even an EV with a smaller battery. With the app, CityEV costs 28p per kWh, although contactless payment is available. The 3kW chargers might be meagre, but if you live in a street with no off-street parking, a 3kW charger will still get your EV ready for the daily commute overnight while you sleep, making electric ownership viable.
Another company rolling out street chargers is Ubitricity, now owned by Shell. Ubitricity’s lamppost chargers can be used on a pay-as-you-go basis without an app, but don’t offer contactless payment. Instead, they provide a QR code you scan that leads to a website to enter your contact details. Charging rates tend to be 5-6kW, which will get most vehicles back to full overnight. There is an app, which provides access to cheaper rates, but that requires a special adapter that is quite expensive and appears to be aimed at taxi drivers. The QR code system isn’t as simple as contactless payment, but it still works quite well.
Source London chargers, as the name suggests, are prevalent in London, having won an early contract to build out street charging for the city. The company used to price per minute, and some of its legacy units (if you can find them) are free with an RFID card. But since the beginning of December 2021, the headline rate for pay as you go is a whopping 69p per kW, or 80p per kW for central London. There’s a 5p per minute idle fee, too, although this might sound like a reasonable rate for parking in London. However, you can reduce costs with memberships and an RFID card.
This is just a representative example of the many companies now providing street charging. There are many more, such as EB Charging (operating in Brighton, Oxford, Leicester, and Leeds amongst 40 councils). ConnectedKerb is another company rolling out street chargers, for example in West Sussex and Coventry. Some of these companies require an app to use their chargers, some offer contactless payment, some require an RFID card, and some are part of a multi-network consortium with its own RFID card such as Octopus Electric Juice. Many offer more than one payment option. Once you move into an area but don’t have a home charger, get to know what is available on the street locally and explore the most cost-effective routine for charging.
Also look into Co Charger, which allows those who do have off-street parking and charging to rent this out to other EV users.
Public Destination Charging
Related to street charging is public and municipal charging at venues where you might go for activities or entertainment. This is also often AC charging at 7kW, but if you’re stopping at a shopping mall, for example, a couple of hours can be a nice little boost that might even be enough for your full week’s travel, if you’re not a distance commuter. Some of these chargers are either very cheap or free as an incentive to shop.
You can find destination chargers in supermarket car parks – such as the Pod Point service available at many Tesco stores. Sports centre and municipal car parks are also gaining banks of chargers, too, operated by a variety of networks. But there are some caveats here. These kinds of chargers tend to be the least well maintained.
As noted above, for example, bp pulse has done poorly in the Zap-Map survey, but it should be considered to be two different networks under the same brand, or even multiple networks. On the one hand, the chargers at bp petrol stations are owned and fully managed by bp pulse directly, so tend to be more reliable. But the company has also bought a whole slew of other charging brands, such as Chargemaster (including Polar), D2N2 and Charge Your Car. While bp pulse runs these networks, and performs the maintenance, repairs must be instigated by the location owner – such as a local authority or leisure centre company. This extra level of bureaucracy often ends up with chargers sitting broken for months or even years on end.
Since the best time to charge a car is when you’re not using it anyway, though, if you can find a working charger at a place where you were going to spend a few hours doing something else, they make a lot of sense, even slower AC chargers. But always check the status on an app, either the one for the network or a multi-network one such as Zap-Map’s, and don’t rely on this for mission-critical charging on an important journey. See it more as a bonus. Also, bear in mind that some car parks also expect you to pay for parking along with power, so just going there to charge can be more expensive than a similar charger without premium parking attached.
Motorway Service Station Rapids, Forecourts and Hubs
Although Tesla’s cars are market leading for their features and performance, their not-so-secret weapon is the Supercharger network. Tesla is no longer included in Zap-Map’s annual charger network survey, due to it not being a public network (Tesla owners only), but when it last was included in 2020 and before, it easily topped the rankings for customer satisfaction. If you drill down into the details, Tesla users gave the Supercharger network 5/5 stars, and the AC-only Destination network 4.4, which is still high but not as good some others.
Tesla is reportedly considering opening up its network to other brands, and has recently been trialling this in the Netherlands. But until then, if you don’t own a Tesla you will need to look elsewhere for the fastest charge on the move, and the good news is that this area is expanding fast. The GRIDSERVE hub in Braintree has shown the way forward, offering a wide array of charger speeds and on-site amenities to use while you’re charging, with very competitive rates. Osprey’s plan to roll out 150 high-powered hubs by 2025 across the UK is on track and will further alleviate range anxiety. InstaVolt has been putting its units into strategically placed McDonald’s, KFC and Costa locations. The reliability of these brands should instil greater confidence for longer journeys.
One of the best bits of news in the last year was that GRIDSERVE has taken over the Electric Highway from Ecotricity. While Ecotricity did a great job of making EVs viable for longer journeys in the nascent years of the previous decade, many of its units have lapsed into disrepair and their speeds now lag behind the 100kW or well beyond that is becoming available with the latest units. Fortunately, GRIDSERVE has already begun upgrading the old Ecotricity devices, but Welcome Break service stations are notably not being upgraded yet, with rumours that this chain is aiming to roll out its own charging network instead.
Rapid charging at a service station or hub is essential for longer EV journeys to be viable. For Tesla owners, sticking to Superchargers has mostly guaranteed that long distances have been possible for some years, although popular sites are getting busy now that so many cars have been sold. For non-Tesla owners, sticking to trusted networks – such as the upgraded GRIDSERVE Electric Highway, Osprey, or InstaVolt – and having a backup plan as well as never leaving it to the last percent will mean that distance driving by electric will be as painless as possible.
How Much Should You Pay for EV Charging?
With what is going on in the power supply business in the UK at the moment, any conversation about charging costs risks becoming very rapidly dated. Although British Gas has claimed some chargers can cost as much as £4 per kWh, in reality the maximum appears to be Source London chargers in the centre of the city at 80p per kWh. Below that, the 69p per kWh is the price of non-central Source London chargers and IONITY 350kW rapids, although IONITY partners such as BMW, VW or Kia/Hyundai get discounts with the latter, and Source memberships reduce its costs too.
Below that, 20-40p per kWh is the going rate for AC charging (with a few lower or even free if you can still find them). DC charging usually ranges from 30p to 50p per kWh, but basic 50kW units can be cheaper than the faster rapids that are nominally over 100kW. InstaVolt chargers have a blanket 45p per kWh rate, for example, but Osprey chargers are cheaper at 40p per kWh. The prices for bp pulse charging range considerably depending on power and whether you are paying contactless or using one of the membership levels. A bp pulse subscriber using a 50kW charger pays 32p per kWh, but a contactless 150kW charger costs 50p.
Even if you are paying 80p per kWh, your EV is still likely to be costing you less to run per mile than an equivalent petrol or diesel car. But when you can pay a third of that at other networks, or even less with some home supplies, being selective (and knowledgeable) about where you charge can save you even more, making EVs much cheaper than fossil fuel.
Charger Etiquette and Final Thoughts
As a final note, if you spend any length of time on EV user groups, you will see numerous posts about charger hogging, and particularly “ICE-ing”. This is where a non-electric car parks in a charging bay, either due to ignorance or as a deliberate act of defiance against the inevitable onslaught of electrification. We can’t do much about the latter, but as EV owners we can be kind to our fellow electricity fans. The normal rule of thumb is to charge only to 80% at a public rapid charger, or possibly 90% if nobody is waiting and you have the time.
However, using rapid DC charging to over 80% on a regular basis is not recommended for a number of reasons. First, with most battery chemistries it’s not very good for the longevity of the cells (Tesla’s new Model 3 LFP cells being the exception). The other, more immediate reason is that all EV batteries will mitigate potential damage by considerably slowing charge rates as the battery approaches full. Most drop to below 50kW above 80%, and some even drop close to AC rates. So while it may take the fastest charging cars as little as 30 minutes to go from 10 to 80%, the remaining 20% could take an equal time to complete. Most sensible distance drivers base the interval between stops on the 80% range of their cars for this reason, or even 70% to leave a 10% buffer.
Another thing to bear in mind is just how fast your EV can charge. Don’t hog a 350kW charger if your car can barely do 100kW and there are chargers at lower speeds available. They will also most likely be cheaper per kW too. Sometimes you have no choice, but another bugbear amongst EV owners is when slow-charging cars, especially plug-in hybrids, sit on chargers for hours on end, long after a full charge. Be a good EV citizen, and don’t do this.
Final Thoughts
So that’s a selection of pro tips for charging success. In this transition period, you won’t avoid occasionally reaching a charger that is broken, already taken, or you don’t have the app for. But now that there is a head of steam behind EV purchasing and the number of the cars on the road is rising fast, there are good economic reasons for charger networks to increase their footprints and ensure their devices are working. There is money to be made, and BP even reckons its rapids will be more profitable than its petrol stations soon. The charging future is bright, even if the present has its pitfalls to overcome.
In future Charging guides, we will explore the various reasons why DC chargers don’t deliver their nominal maximum speeds, and the trials and tribulations of getting a charger installed at home.