UK switching to electric vehicles discussion

[trebor79]

Yeah I see more and more on the roads, and it's great to see. Maybe in another year sales of BEV will be greater than petrol cars.
Off to Cornwall from home on Norfolk in a few weeks. We usually stop at a nature reserve for a walk, and charge at Amesbury and Exeter, but I think we could actually cut that to just Exeter. They're only 20 minutes stops and everyone needs a wee anyway, so it's not hardship.
Car charges in the car park.

I travel a lot for work and the car charges whilst I sleep. So convenient not having to waste time filling a tank.

 

[cactustwirly]

The big Sainsbury's near my house has installed car chargers a few months ago.
Been at different times of day, have only seen a handful of cars using it. Still got a way to go.

It is 72p per kWh, I gather this is quite expensive

 

[AM9]

The big Sainsbury's near my house has installed car chargers a few months ago.
Been at different times of day, have only seen a handful of cars using it. Still got a way to go.

It is 72p per kWh, I gather this is quite expensive

With so many IC drivers claiming that there aren't enough chargers to assuage their range paranoia, the sight of only a handful of cars using recently installed chargers should comfort them. What do you mean by "Still got a way to go"?

 

[The Ham]

With so many IC drivers claiming that there aren't enough chargers to assuage their range paranoia, the sight of only a handful of cars using recently installed chargers should comfort them. What do you mean by "Still got a way to go"?

Charging points have increased by 35% in the last year:

Electric vehicle public charging infrastructure statistics: January 2025

www.gov.uk

Compared to 1 January 2024:

• total installed devices increased by 19,657, an increase of 37%
• the number of charging devices in urban areas increased by 35%, or 14,021 devices
• the number of charging devices in rural areas increased by 45%, or 2,974 devices

That's about 1 charger for up to 20 new EV's delivered over the same period.

Many EV's are currently not using such chargers as they can charge at home.

 

[trebor79]

The big Sainsbury's near my house has installed car chargers a few months ago.
Been at different times of day, have only seen a handful of cars using it. Still got a way to go.

It is 72p per kWh, I gather this is quite expensive

It's actually not that expensive for a DC rapid charge.
Shell etc tend to be around 89p. Tesla about 40p, cheaper if you drive a Tesla (and seem to have reduced prices recently).
It doesn't really matter because even doing 30,000 miles a year I rarely need a DC charge.

 

[Snow1964]

Many EV's are currently not using such chargers as they can charge at home.

I have noticed a big uptake recently, I belong to a local walking group, and we start/end our walks in town, and some of the estates around town now seem to have multiple home driveway chargers, on some roads it is upto about every 5th or 6th house.
But there are also areas with on street parking and no driveways and there are no chargers or electric cars.

My home tariff is 6.7p per kw/h midnight to 7am, which allows about 180 miles to be added at 7.6kw (costs about £2.50-£3). If I know I have long journey then I set the car to 90% or 100% charge level (default is to charge to 80%), and even if almost empty, can do it over 2 nights to give 240 miles range without using more expensive daytime electricity rate.

I have used public chargers, but only when need to and nowhere near home (they tend to cost 65 -85p so about 10-13 times price of doing it overnight at home).

Since having the cheap overnight electricity tariff, I have recently installed a high power time switch to the immersion and now using that overnight during summer too (although don't know if it is cheaper than gas, but it does stop heat from hot pipes between boiler and tank, and dont need extra heat this time of year). Will just occasionally use boiler for few minutes to stop pumps seizing up.

I drive about 11,000 miles per year, and my fuel bill since getting an electric car has changed from around £110-120 per month, to about £10 per month, saving around £1300 per year.

 

[Mawkie]

I have used public chargers, but only when need to and nowhere near home (they tend to cost 65 -85p so about 10-13 times price of doing it overnight at home).

And here is the crux for those that can't change at home...the elephant in the room.

Everyone I know who is hesitant about buying an electric car is no longer worried about range, or charging infrastructure, but price of charging when out and about - particularly if they can't charge at home. It makes car ownership more cumbersome (away from home charging times) and more expensive.

It's a shame Tesla are so (relatively) cheap to charge - not all of us want such a large car.

So, I'll be getting another Yaris hybrid this year and see where we are in 3 year's time.

 

[cactustwirly]

It's actually not that expensive for a DC rapid charge.
Shell etc tend to be around 89p. Tesla about 40p, cheaper if you drive a Tesla (and seem to have reduced prices recently).
It doesn't really matter because even doing 30,000 miles a year I rarely need a DC charge.

That's the same as filling up a petrol car?
100kwh battery is £72. Actually quite expensive if it only does 250 miles

 

[Noddy]

It's a shame Tesla are so (relatively) cheap to charge - not all of us want such a large car.

Many Tesla chargers are ‘open to all’ and if you don’t have home charging the best bet is to get a Tesla (assuming you can tolerate giving Elmo more money) or Ionity subscription (whichever is more local to you). While they aren’t as cheap as home charging having a subscription with one (or both) of these will reduced your typical charging price to the low 40kwh per pence which, depending on how efficient your EV is a least on a par with petrol, if not cheaper.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Jul 2025 ==

That's the same as filling up a petrol car?
100kwh battery is £72. Actually quite expensive if it only does 250 miles

Unless it’s a truck a 100kwh battery will get well in excess of 250 miles. Large inefficient SUVs (eg KIA EV9) will get over 300miles real world, the Mercedes EQS has a 118kwh battery and will do 425 miles real world (London to Stirling). But of course for the majority of folk home charging is much cheaper so even if you’re driving to Inverness and return, you’re only going to pay for part of the journey at public charging not the whole journey.

And if you are paying for public charging for the whole journey the Mercedes has a real world efficiency of 3.6mile kWh so 425 miles at a subscription cost of 40p is £47.20. I’m sceptical that a similar size petrol car would be as cheap as that.

 

[Energy]

It is 72p per kWh, I gather this is quite expensive

It’s quite expensive. If you use Octopus Electoverse you get a slight discount, since their payment mechanisms take a much lower cut than credit cards.

And here is the crux for those that can't change at home...the elephant in the room.

Everyone I know who is hesitant about buying an electric car is no longer worried about range, or charging infrastructure, but price of charging when out and about - particularly if they can't charge at home. It makes car ownership more cumbersome (away from home charging times) and more expensive.

The on street AC charging pillars are too expensive as well. ConnectedKerb is 43p/kWh (midnight to 7am), Shell Recharge is 47p/kWh (11pm to 6am)

So, I'll be getting another Yaris hybrid this year and see where we are in 3 year's time.

I’m assuming you don’t have off street parking?

No off street parking, and no workplace charging and I can’t blame anyone for waiting a few more years. I’m hopeful that once more supermarkets get proper EV charging, the price will drop.

 

[johncrossley]

Looking at Google Street View in Norwegian towns, you don't see lots of street charging so they must be achieving high EV penetration primarily from other charging locations.

 

[trebor79]

That's the same as filling up a petrol car?
100kwh battery is £72. Actually quite expensive if it only does 250 miles

100kWh is going to be at least 100 miles and more likely 400 miles range.
And you'd never do 0-100% at a public charger anyway.
Yes, DC charging van be as expensive as petrol. But 80% or more will be charging at home for pennies so it really does not matter.

 

[Ediswan]

100kWh is going to be at least 100 miles and more likely 400 miles range.
And you'd never do 0-100% at a public charger anyway.
Yes, DC charging van be as expensive as petrol. But 80% or more will be charging at home for pennies so it really does not matter.

Something I am yet to see is calculation of an allowance for the cost of the domestic electrical work for anything faster than a "13A" charger. How many kWh should that cost be spread over ?

 

[trebor79]

Something I am yet to see is calculation of an allowance for the cost of the domestic electrical work for anything faster than a "13A" charger. How many kWh should that cost be spread over ?

? Single phase domestic EVSE are 32A. Depending upon exact layout and how much cable is needed they are about £600-£1,000 fitted cost.
So if you're saving 50p/kWh average over public prices (and it's probably a lot more than that), it's paid for itself after 1,200-2,000kWh, or 3,500-8,000 miles driving depending upon car.
So it's quite a short payback.

 

[Energy]

? Single phase domestic EVSE are 32A. Depending upon exact layout and how much cable is needed they are about £600-£1,000 fitted cost.
So if you're saving 50p/kWh average over public prices (and it's probably a lot more than that), it's paid for itself after 1,200-2,000kWh, or 3,500-8,000 miles driving depending upon car.
So it's quite a short payback.

I think they mean comparing charging off a 10A (13A can't be done continuously) 2.3kW "granny" charger and a 7.4kW proper EVSE.

There isn't a definitive number. If you are doing >40 miles per day, then a 2.3kW charger is potentially adequate; however, you'd need to plug in every single day, and the occasional full charges will take ages.

 

[bangor-toad]

Hi,
I did the calculations comparing the costs of installing a 'granny charger' against a 7kW home system.
Both options would be for the charger to be near the end of the drive.

Granny Charger
A 13amp continual load socket (BS1363EV) £10 from Screwfix
2.5mm armoured cable. Free as I had enough already.
I can connect it into the existing house electrics.

7kW home Charger
Charger unit. £500
25m 6mm armoured cable with network £220
Installation fee (estimated) about £300
Plus I'd need additional work in our main consumer unit. (Costs not included here).

So essentially free for the granny Charger Vs about £1k for a 7kW charger.

Our usage is about 100 miles per week.
As a rough estimate we'll get ( at worse) about 3 miles per kWH.
So we'll need about 35kWH per week.

The granny charger gives us 2.3kW per hour so we need to charge for about 15 hours per week.
That's easily achievable and works for us.
We don't think there's any advantage for us to get the 7kW home charger. Any urgent charging can be done at the local public charging points for about an additional 30p per kWH.

To get to the break even point for the home charger we'd need to use about 3,000 kWH on the public chargers. We don't think we'll get there in the foreseeable future so we'll stick to the granny charger with occasional public charging if / when needed.

There are some rambling thoughts, hope they're of some use to someone.
Cheers,
Mr Toad

 

[Snow1964]

@bangor-toad you are basically correct that if you only do few miles per week then you can use a granny charger.

However your calculations missed out that you would need to buy the lead to the car with the plug that fits the car (sometimes called type 1 lead) as these are not supplied as standard with cars. You can order these, depending on cable length, and if it has a protection circuit, about £90-150

If you cannot charge at cheap overnight rates of around 7p per Kw/h then likely to be charging at nearer 25-30p (depending on your electricity tariff) as daytime tariffs normally around four times as much (but still lot cheaper than petrol which tends to be nearer 85p equivalent per 3.5 - 4 mile Kw/h).

As a rule of thumb overnight electricity is about a twelfth of the cost of petrol/diesel per mile.

 

[Energy]

However your calculations missed out that you would need to buy the lead to the car with the plug that fits the car (sometimes called type 1 lead) as these are not supplied as standard with cars. You can order these, depending on cable length, and if it has a protection circuit, about £90-150

A type 1lead is usually a J1772 lead, used for some older cars and in America. Since it’s only single phase it’s fallen out of use in Europe, with the type 2 lead being predominant.

A 10A UK plug charger is usually referred to as a granny charger or portable ev charger.

Some EVs included them but most don’t seem to anymore, so I agree with including the cost of one .

 

[bangor-toad]

Hi,
Snow1964 mentions some good points there. I'll add a few bits I'd overlooked:

Pleasantly the car we got (MG) came with both a 7kW cable and a 10amp granny charger. So no additional costs for us there but I appreciate this isn't common.

I looked at the cheap rates but it's just not worth it for us with the tariffs we can get. I'm in Northern Ireland so the suppliers and deals are different. Whilst I can get cheaper overnight tariffs our overnight usage, including charging the MG, is small compared to daytime use. The small daytime increase associated with the cheap night rates mean it's better to keep the flat tariff.

I'm keeping an eye on both our usage and the local market to see if or when it's worth changing.

So overall the MG will cost less to power than the petrol car it replaced but by less than the margins some get in the rest of the UK. However for our needs of short frequent journeys it seems to be working well.

Cheers
Mr Toad

 

[Bald Rick]

New Car sales figures for June are now published

Battery Electric 47,354 (24.8%)
plug In EV 21,382 (11.2%)
hybrid EV 23,835 (12.5%)
petrol 88,029 (46.0%)
diesel 10,716 (5.6%)

Think you mean plug in HEV on the second row?

I wonder how things work out over the UK, as I'm seeing a disproportionately high number of EVs near me now - so it makes me wonder if most of the people buying petrol cars are in mostly rural areas (and are still suffering battery anxiety issues that don't really exist).

Likewise, perhaps in some areas there are many people who still have two or more cars - and perhaps what I'm seeing is more people using their EV more and more (again, once they realise range/battery anxiety is mostly not an issue, they may choose to drive their EV more than the petrol/diesel/hybrid).

Yes, I‘ve been saying this for a year now. (See the thread I started about the ‘73s and ‘74s, thread title sneakily chosen to make people think I was talking about Southern Region electro-diesels)

I reckon around half of all new cars I see in St Albans are BEVs. Including lots of Renault 5s

Although today I saw a MG Cyberster. Looked amazing from behind (I was on my bike on a steep hill when it went past).

Quite a few electric cars in Norwich, sometimes 2 or 3 line astern.

In central London you will often see a line of cars (perhaps up to a dozen) queueing for lights and all of them are EVs (I include London taxis as an EV, as it is relatively rare to see one with the range extender running).

Something I am yet to see is calculation of an allowance for the cost of the domestic electrical work for anything faster than a "13A" charger. How many kWh should that cost be spread over ?

Depends on the deal you get. The one I’m getting is free, although it should be caveated as “free” as no doubt the cost is hidden elsewhere.

 

[ABen90]

Until very recently I lived in the Midlands but my parents live in the rural north east of England. The difference in number of EVs on the road was really apparent. Our Model 3 really stood out! Still seems to be some wariness up there, even in households that can afford new cars and (until recently) the inflated price tag of an EV. Many houses have driveways and distances aren’t actually that great so hopefully things will change soon. Parents were on Mull a few weeks ago and got around fine in their EV, albeit their b&b had a charger and the public one in Tobermory was very quiet. Seems a no brainer to me, electricity is all around whereas must be a nightmare getting fuel out to these rural communities.

 

[HSTEd]

36% of cars being plug in implies a fall in car fuel use of something like 2% per year compared to a zero battery electric vehicle counterfactual. That's going to become noticeable pretty quickly if the rate keeps increasing.

With my climate/energy researcher hat on, I have come to the conclusion that a granny charger, or pseudo granny charger, solution is perfectly adequate for the majority of people.

Even with a 230V 10A unit you will get 16kWh per night on Economy 7. On a ~5.5hr EV tarrif like Outfox Energy's, you will still get ~12.7kWh.
The actual value may well by higher or lower depending on local voltage, on my house my voltage regularly sits at 245V or so.

In any case, 12-16kWh per night will easily satisfy the requirements of the bulk of poeple, given that average car mileage is only around 20 miles per day in any case.

We shouldn't allow an impression of house electrical work being needed to support EVs to discourage people from adopting them.

EDIT:
A BYD Dolphin surf is a bit shy of 4 miles per kWh in normal weather for reference.

Even in winter with lower efficiency, you will probably normally be okay with a Granny charger, especially if you occasionally spend a small amount on a few units of "day" rate electricity.

 

[Bald Rick]

That's going to become noticeable pretty quickly if the rate keeps increasing.

It already is in St Albans, in my experience. I reckon 10% of all cars here are BEVs, and another 10% are plug in hybrids or mild hybrids that do high mog. Queues at the petrol stations just don’t happen any more. (Except for the car wash)

In any case, 12-16kWh per night will easily satisfy the requirements of the bulk of poeple, given that average car mileage is only around 20 miles per day in any case.

The thing to measure is the amount of thime the car spends on the drive. Many cars, possibly a majority, are on the drive 90%+ of the time. So it‘s not just night charging, it will be in the day too (especially with Agile prices of 1p / kWh, as we saw this afternoon).

 

[Sun Chariot]

The borough in which we live - noteworthy for being Europe's biggest council estate (in the latter 20th Cebtury) - there are sizeable residential areas without own driveway and without roadside parking. Instead, vehicles are parked in designated off street parking lots; which prevent use of cabling between properties and vehicles.
I see EVs but it's in the minority, as those residents will need to use charging points at supermarkets, etc. Their personal net income likely plays into the level of EV ownership.

 

[AlastairFraser]

The borough in which we live - noteworthy for being Europe's biggest council estate (in the latter 20th Cebtury) - there are sizeable residential areas without own driveway and without roadside parking. Instead, vehicles are parked in designated off street parking lots; which prevent use of cabling between properties and vehicles.
I see EVs but it's in the minority, as those residents will need to use charging points at supermarkets, etc. Their personal net income likely plays into the level of EV ownership.

Although the presence of those off street car parks makes it easier for the local authority to install charges for people to use, which will be extra useful as and when EVs become reliably affordable second hand.

 

[Sun Chariot]

Although the presence of those off street car parks makes it easier for the local authority to install charges for people to use,

It will be very interesting to see how our financially-strapped borough* deals with the many hundreds of the parking areas, which range in capacity from 4 spaces to 12+ and varying in shape from "park around the edges of a square" to "park in a parallel line".

*' Recent data my wife read out to me (I don't have a source to hand) cited the Borough's annual welfare outgoings exceed its revenues.

 

[styles]

It will be very interesting to see how our financially-strapped borough* deals with the many hundreds of the parking areas, which range in capacity from 4 spaces to 12+ and varying in shape from "park around the edges of a square" to "park in a parallel line".

*' Recent data my wife read out to me (I don't have a source to hand) cited the Borough's annual welfare outgoings exceed its revenues.

They tend to get matched funding from one of TfL, DfT, Energy Saving Trust, or the public charger owners themselves.

London boroughs collectively have around 1 public charger per 4 vehicles. Some boroughs are better than others of course.

 

[Snow1964]

They tend to get matched funding from one of TfL, DfT, Energy Saving Trust, or the public charger owners themselves.

London boroughs collectively have around 1 public charger per 4 vehicles. Some boroughs are better than others of course.

Does rather highlight disparity, around the country. My town (over 10k inhabitants) and which is trying to reinvent itself as a tourist destination has just 4 public chargers (all very slow around 7kw).

Probably why those with driveways at home seem to be embracing getting electric vehicles, but those without aren't. A home charger likely to give you over 180 miles for around £2.50 on overnight tariff, but would be more like £30 on public charger (and similar £30 for petrol car)

 

[styles]

Does rather highlight disparity, around the country. My town (over 10k inhabitants) and which is trying to reinvent itself as a tourist destination has just 4 public chargers (all very slow around 7kw).

Probably why those with driveways at home seem to be embracing getting electric vehicles, but those without aren't. A home charger likely to give you over 180 miles for around £2.50 on overnight tariff, but would be more like £30 on public charger (and similar £30 for petrol car)

Yeah the disparity is shocking. London has something like a quarter of all charging points.

London's population is around 1/7th of the UK total population, so it's over-represented. Then consider that roughly half of all Londoners in the inner and outer borough's combined report not having access to a car.

I suppose the difference is they do have aggressive anti-ICE policies - LEZ, ULEZ, emissions based parking permits/charges, new black cabs required to be partial or full EV, etc.

The only cities with more aggressive anti-ICE policies are Scottish cities where the low emissions zone is a fines based system which, if breached more than 4 times, results in a fine if £960 every day you drive into one of the LEZ areas. Whereas in London you can pay £12.50 if you really want to drive an old diesel to somewhere inside the M25.

 

[GLC]

The only cities with more aggressive anti-ICE policies are Scottish cities where the low emissions zone is a fines based system which, if breached more than 4 times, results in a fine if £960 every day you drive into one of the LEZ areas.

It's capped at £480 for passenger cars