EV charging

Can anyone with a EV recommend a decent place to charge?

Mcdonald's has just charged me £14 for 17 minutes.

 

There’s some fast chargers at the Fairway at Dodworth. Never used them, but noticed when I was scoping out if I could get an EV despite having no off road parking.

 

Have you got the Zap-map app? Shows you where all the nearest chargers are, what price, speed and whether they are available

 

I do in fact, duh! Silly me

 

The ones at McDonalds are Instavolt. They have always had a reputation as being one of the reliable networks but when electricity prices spiked they pushed their prices up and up and they never came down again - they are now one of the most expensive networks to use. I tend to use them as a last resort these days (not that I need to rapid charge much, mainly when I am on a UK holiday).

As already said, ZapMap is your friend. But rapid charging is obviously the most expensive way to charge your car.

As an aside, it's not charging you by the minute, it is charging you per Kwh consumed. I think Instavolt is 85p per kwh, which is borderline insane when prices have come down so much in the last year or so.

 

I thought that one of the main reasons for people being conditioned to buy electric vehicles was that they are cheap to run? I've no idea how many miles 17 minutes of charging gets you, but that looks like absolute extortion.

 

Around 78 miles

 

Apparently Aldi is free?

 

They are pennies per mile to run if you can charge at home or at work. I charge at night for 8.5p per kwh, which is 1/10th of what Instavolt have just charged the OP. Works out at less than 3p per mile.

If you can't, then it undoubtedly costs more and this is something that the new government need to do something about if they want to reach the point where new ICE car sales can be phased out by 2030. The rapid charge network is growing exponentially now but rapid charging is the most convenient but also the most expensive way to charge What is needed now is for a rollout of much larger numbers of destination chargers, as they are easier to deploy and cheaper. These will obviously take hours to charge your car as they are the same speed as your home charger, but if they are everywhere in large numbers, then wherever you park the car, you can take the opportunity to do a bit of grazing on these whilst you are off doing something else, and you can get by like that, an hour here and an hour there, without ever needing to rapid charge.

The private networks have got the rapid charging covered. If the govt are going to make councils do more in their area, this is what they need to focus on. That, and providing solutions to assist people who can't charge at home such as lamppost charging, providing pavement gulley services on demand etc.

Having said that, I am not sure why there should be any expectation that driving an EV must be cheaper than an ICE. In the end, the world doesn't work like that. But the govt need to recognise where the barriers to adoption are and do more to break them down.

 

Instavolt prices are 85p per kWh. Depends on the efficiency of the car but if you get say 4 miles per kwh, which a Corsa like the OPs should be doing in summer, that's 21p per mile.

As you said, extortionate. But home charging is a tenth of that.

 

Where are you, are you in town?

There is one rapid and several destination chargers in the market Gate car park. Rapid is 71p per kwh

There are 3 rapids on Wombwell Lane, Osprey, 70p per kwh.

Other than that, the Podpoints at Lidl may be your best bet (65p per kWh). Avoid the GeniePoints at Morrisons, they are truly awful. But it seems Barnsley is not yet over blessed with options, most of them are Instavolts like the one you just used.

 

My home charging is 7p per kWh for 6 hours 23.30-05.30. I couldn’t afford to run the car if I was using public chargers

 

It's disgusting the public prices, they were great 2 years ago. Price per KwH went down but public chargers continued to rise. Try not to use the public ones unless on a long journey

 

Why are you using a local rapid, can you not charge at home?

If not, then you need to be doing what you can to get the price down a bit. For example, sign up to Octopus Electroverse - this is an app or RFID card that can be used at quite a number of providers and when using it, provides a bit of a discount on the rock up and pay price. If your home energy account is with Octopus, you can choose to have the charges applied to your monthly energy account. There are other similar options to get a discount but ultimately, paying rapid prices will be the most expensive way of charging, come what may.

Edit:Octopus Electroverse discounts:

5% off all charging if you are an Octopus Go customer
8% off all charging if you are an Intelligent Octopus customer.
5% off charging on Ionity
20% off charging on Osprey between 7pm and 11pm
Plunge pricing when advertised.

 

Agree. The network has expanded so fast that there is no issue now with finding charges. The issue now is with the prices. I get that these companies need revenue to reinvest in expanding further but there has to be a limit to what is reasonable.

One thing the govt can do immediately and at I imagine a negligible cost in the grand scheme of things is to make the VAT rate on public charging 5% instead of 20%, to match the rate on home energy. In the overall govt figures, the cost would be a rounding error. Assuming the reduction is passed on, that would shave 10p per kwh off the price straight away.

The other good thing happening is Tesla's continued opening up of their network to non Tesla cars. Their rates at non peak times are like what the others were charging 4 years ago,around 30p. Wherever there is a Tesla site open to all, price wise that will always be the best option. Once they have opened them all, it will hopefully force the others to come down.

Edit - Nearest Tesla sites open to all are currently Leeds and Mansfield.

 

Just seen, there are 6 x E.ON Drive chargers at the Fairway pub in Dodworth - 63p per kWh. Fast ones too, 300kw - not that the Corsa can take it anything like that fast. That doesn't seem too bad.

 

Biggest con going this EV malarkey.

 

We've used the EOn ones up at the Fairway, there's 12 of em. I charge my Corsa at home but the Enyaq is a company car so we've done it when out just for speed more than anything else and popped into the pub for a drink. They are one of the cheapest at 63p, takes about half hour for 200 miles

 

I've had one for twelve months. Did the maths and had one installed at home, but even if I'd not charging off a three pin plug at home would get me 100 miles off 12 hours charge and overnight that would cost me less than a tenner. With a bit of planning I've never had to charge anywhere other than home.

 

That seems rather high. Have you not got a time of use tariff sorted yet? 5 hours charging, which adds about 130 miles, costs me just over 3 quid. That's on Octopus Go. Would be even cheaper when I can be arsed to switch to Intelligent Octopus.