r/evchargingUK

I am due to get Polestar 3 on a lease/company scheme and have a discounted offer of either the Ohme Pro or Ohme epod. Polestar also potentially have an offer of a zaptec go at half the cost.

I am currently with Eon Next and from what i gather neither of these with my car will be eligible for the smart tarriff, so u less i choose to spend more and get the hypervolt or zappi, i cant see the choice of charger making any difference.

Does anyone have any thoughts or should i just go for the cheapest charger available.

Fyi i dont do much mileage only 8k max per year

They will invalidate it if anyone but their installer touch’s any of the install (even a local qualified electrician). Fine - but the gotcha is that their “approved installers” won’t stand by the CRA requirements for warranty on electrical installations and insist their work is only covered for a year, so want £160 to even look at the fault after the first year - even though all components of the install (consumer unit, charger, etc) have a 3 year manufacturer warranty.

And Hypervolt think this is fine.

Their chargers are ok, but I’d never use them again because their warranty behaviour is verging on criminal (and it’s a very expensive item to be failing after a year).

Hi,

Anyone had success with getting an EV charger installed on a private estate in England? I have a freehold house and parking space, but my parking space is separated by a 1m walkway owned by the estate freeholder.

Anyone ever had any similar work done and can let me know roughly how much they paid, and what the process is?

Our Estate Management company doesn't own the land, so they have given me an address to send snail mail to.

Bit of an odd one! I started the charge using an allstar fuel card but at the end of the charge the charger was requesting payment still and wouldn't accept the fuel card - I ended up paying with my bank card but then a few hours later instavolt refunded my account?

Wondering if anyone could tell me where I went wrong or if this is a charger to avoid in the future?

Im half convinced I maybe was meant to ignore the card reader and just drive off!

Hi all,

I had an epod installed a few days ago and last night was my first time using/charging my vehicle.
I have a bmw, and was told by the guy who installed it to use mybmw app to schedule the charge. I’ve done this and input it charges between 2300-0600 to 80%.

However, every few minutes the app kept pausing the charge, and then changing the schedule to charge between 0400-0900 for whatever reason. So I’ve now woken up without it being fully charged.

What is the best way to charge going forward?
Am I doing something wrong? Do I use the ohme app or the bmw app?
I’m also on EDF go electric so my off peak is 7p and I want to utilise this price so charging in day is not desirable

Thanks

Some reading through here and r/ElectricVehiclesUK suggests the Hypervolt, Zappi and Anderson are all decent chargers to go for, with some questions about Ohme.

They all look to support "smart" tarrifs like IoG, but I can't find any details about if they're clever enough to work with Agile and pick the cheapest charging window etc?

Morning all. I’m getting solar and battery installed next week, followed by an EV charger at the end of the month (different installer). My solar installer has confirmed the G99 has gone through with no issue but when I asked if they had checked if the main fuse needed upgrading, they said they didn’t usually check this. I did contact the DNO a few weeks ago asking if I needed to do this and they sid the solar or EV installer would do this. My questions are:

1. As part of the G99 application, does the DNO check this as part of their process - I would assume they would - and if needed, they would inform both me and the installer this needed to be done?
2. if the DNO does this, presumably the EV installer would then need to inform the DNO and there would be a similar check again?

I can just raise a request via the DNO website myself but it’s not clear what the standard process is. Also the label on the fuse has worn away so it isn’t clear what size the fuse is currently.

I need to get a home charger installed and have shortlisted a few chargers, including the Vchrgd Seven Pro tethered version.

I've seen a few recommendations for it here, but am just looking for other feedback about day to day usage really. The app looks a little basic compared to some, but from what I can gather, the car itself (Model Y) will handle most things directly anyway.

We're with Octopus right now, but their intelligent Go seems expensive for daytime rates (we work from home so most our usage is then), plus we'll only charge the car once or twice a month. I'm thinking EDF might be the way to go, or E.on/OVO, so anyone who has that combination and could let me know their experience, that would be great.

Hi all,

I just added an EV to my existing Solar+Battery and looking for a new tariff.

I am super confused with trying to find a good balance with offpeak charging / standing charge / export rates from my solar.

Previously i had a good EON Next drive tariff that was 3p off peak and 16.5p export. Lowest I can find now is 7p ish? from EDF and 13p export or so. (what has happened to the tariffs?!?!)

My mileage is kind of low at around 4000 miles per year

Any advice?

Thanks

I put my recent-and-first-EV on my home charger today and it would only charge at 1.23kW. It has charged at 7.4kW several times before so I know the charger should be OK.

Then when I got in and switched the car on I got a scary red warning box 'Emergency charging only available'. Given the the HUD stopped working a few days ago I was imagining something fundamental was dying.

After a hasty Google, skimming the manual etc. and finding lots of very expensive possible causes I finally found something saying '...or the charge cable might not be plugged in properly'. That was easy to check so I got out and sure enough I could push the charge cable into the car another 10mm, then I restarted the charge and happily got 7.4kW for the next few hours.

Just the HUD to fix now. At least I found the warranty docs while I was looking for the manual!

Well, it's no news that things fail. But until it happens you don't know how.

TL;DR: when EV charging cables fail, they don't necessarily stop working. You may still be able to charge the car in some way even with a faulty cable.

My home charging cable has been in use for just over 4y, it's a menekes blue AC cable (3ph I believe, but only ever used in a 1ph charger). So not a rubbish/cheap cable. It does have an awful design flaw in that the protective lid for the car connection side would pool up rain water via the locking slot with no way to drain it...

Anyway 2 days ago, id7 wouldn't hold a 7kW charge. It would go up to 7, then down to 0/0.5kW and hold it there for a bit then back up to 7. After some time of doing this it would stop charging. I thought it was software that was acting up... I managed to get a charge in at 2kW through the night. Not ideal, but I will test tomorrow to make sure it is the car acting up, not the charger.

Sure enough the EX30 charged at 7kW - phew! Until it didn't... slowed down to 50W and stayed there. Whoops!! So it's not the id7! Swapped the cable for a longer yellow one that came with the id7 and the ex30 charged normally.

So the blue menekes cable is faulty in some way, just not enough to not work. I believe these are entirely passive wires (i.e. have no circuitry in the connectors I'm told they do have a resistor that informs the charger of the current limit) so the only option is careful monitoring of impedance while in operation by the onboard charger, the wall charger or both.

Yep, another wanker who is buying electric and asking questions about the charging side of things. I've done a lot of research but my situation isn't one I can find online. My house is at the end of a little pathway from our communal car park area. The distance is around 40 to 50m to where we park the car.

An actual EV charger is going to be pointless I assume as I'll need to buy a 50m cable which are around £500 so I was thinking of doing a 50m extension lead and granny charging off of 13amps every couple of days using someone like EON for the cheaper rates.

I've now seen that it would be better to get it on a separate circuit for safety due to the current flow but I'm now thinking the extension lead would be an issue with getting hot:

- would using an extension lead off the dedicated EV 3pin socket be an issue

- the cable would go across a pathway which I don't own. My neighbours are chill but what's the legal implication if I cover the cable to avoid a tripping hazard?

- does anyone have a rough cost they paid for installing a separate circuit as the electricians I've spoken to didn't have an answer?

- has anybody done something similar to this and have any advice?

- is there a better solution I'm not thinking of?

- should I just spend the extra and charge off of a lamppost about a 10 min walk away?

- am I being a knob by even trying to charge at home?

We're semi detached in a new build with the fusebox under the stairs attached to the external wall. It's a KIA EV5 we're buying if that makes any difference

I wanted to share my experience with hotel chargers in France. I asked about the feasibility a while back and most of the answers were not to bother. However, I went ahead with it anyway and thought it may be useful for someone looking to do something similar.

Previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricVehiclesUK/comments/1mx29o6/hotel_chargers_in_france/

We've just come back from 2000+ miles round France, staying at 7 different hotels, all with chargers.

The planning:

Usual process for us looking across Booking,com/Hotels,com/Trivago for what hotels we like, only addition was to use the 'EV charger' filter. There were so many hotels with chargers I didn't feel this limited are options at all. However, we were looking for hotels 20/30 minute drive out of towns/cities, I can't say how many city centre ones have EV chargers.

Once we found a hotel or two we liked in each area I emailed them asking a few questions about their chargers: how many they had, what the speed was, whether there was a cost and whether it was reservable. I also checked Electroverse and Plugshare but Plugshare didn't have good coverage. The responses were mostly reassuring, the majority of hotels knew about the chargers in terms of whether they were able to be reserved and what the cost was. They didn't know the cost if it was operated by a third parted and charged per kWh mind, but I could find that on Electroverse.

Cost:

Across the 7 hotels: 2 were free to use, 2 were a fixed amount for a 24 hour period (one €8, one €26) and 3 were operated by third-parties, on a standard cost per kWh basis. The third-party operated ones were all about €0.30/kWh

Experience:

I managed to charge easily at all 7 hotels. Although one hotel had a Tesla charger that wouldn't work with my car so I had to use their other charger.

I was able to reserve a charger in advance at 2 of the hotels. All chargers were 22kw, it seems they're all 22kw in France. My car can only take 11kw AC.

At two hotels I experienced ICE-ing (and EVs using the space but not charging, not sure what the name is for that!). At the first hotel the staff just shrugged their shoulders and said there was nothing they could do. They did have about 15 chargers so it wasn't a big issue but shame they didn't care to fix it. The other hotel only had 1 charging post (with 2 charger ports) that were often blocked by ICE or EVs, I spoke to the hotel reception and they were amazing, immediately saying they'll go and get the number plates of the cars and get in contact with the guests to move - I left them a great reviewing, calling this out.

We did use public chargers on two days, where our journey was over 3/4 hours. A mix of Tesla and Ionity, not a lot to say on that as I think everyone knows the public charging experience in France is superb. We could have easily gone round France without any charger planning as there are chargers at so many aires, you might just pay a bit more for the convenience (€0.60/kWh, Vs my ionity rate of €0.33/kWh)

Overall it was a very simple experience and was very nice setting off with 100% each time! Im not here to advocate it being a better strategy over forgetting hotel chargers and just public charging, just saying it's a viable option if it's one you want to go for.

If you want to give it a go and are happy putting a bit of extra work in planning upfront then go for it.

Hi all, im trying to get some info on scottishpowers ev optimise and their chat advisors have been useless.

Im getting my ev in a few weeks so looking at chargers and tarrifs currently with SP and they have an offer on at the minute to buy a charger through them and get 6p per kwh on ev optimise. I find their descriptions of they will only charge at the greenest and cheapest times a bit vague though.

My car will rarely be plugged in during the day but will be every night, over night. If I set my charge period as for example 8pm to 7am and I want 80% charge by 6am and it is always plugged in for that period will i only ever pay the 6p per kwh for charging and it will be charged to what I want by 6am every day? Or could they say well there were only 2 hours of cheap and green energy so we are charging you full price for the rest of the charging you needed or there were only 2 hours of charging so we charged you 12p for that but you are only at 60% charge?

Apologies for the essay but I cant think of how to get this question simpler, I've been on chat with an advisor twice and neither time did they understand me at all and I was just getting nowhere