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Charging at home is often the most convenient and cost effective way to recharge your EV. Government grants are available for the installation of home EV charge points, and a large number of companies offer a fully installed charge point for a fixed price.
Most home chargers are rated at either 3 kW or 7 kW.
The higher powered wall-mounted units normally cost more than the slower 3 kW option, and halve the time required to fully charge an EV. Many plug-in car manufacturers have deals or partnerships with charge point suppliers, and in some cases provide a free home charge point as part of a new car purchase.
In most cases, home-based charging requires off-street parking to avoid trailing cables across public areas. All EV charging units are wired directly to the central metering unit, usually on its own circuit for safety and to enable monitoring separate from other electrical loads.
Public Charging Stations
There are now thousands of public charging stations. According to Zap-Map, which monitors the UK’s charging station, there are currently around 4,800 locations providing almost 7,500 individual chargers. What’s more, those numbers are continually increasing, with 700 new locations added in the past year alone. With growth at this rate, it won’t be long before charging stations outnumber the UK’s 8,500 petrol and diesel stations
Research has revealed, for example, that the average UK driver covers just 20 miles a day, meaning the majority of charging can occur at home. That means motorway service stations provide the most logical sites for charging stations, as EV owners tend to only need to us public charging points on longer journeys.
Motor Way Charging Stations
The only provider of motorway charging points is Ecotricity, which has 145 public stations at motorway and A-road services around the UK, providing around 300 individual chargers.
Maidstone Services off Junction 8 of the M20 is now the home of an Ionity 350kW charging station using renewable energy.
This is a fast charging capacity and means, for example, that e-Golf vehicles will achieve 80 per cent charge in 45 minutes.
Ionity is a joint venture between Daimler, Ford, BMW and the Volkswagen Group with Audi and Porsche. It aims to increase the practicality of electric vehicles by establishing convenient high-power charging (HPC) sites across Europe.
The first UK station equipped with four high-power DC CCS plug type chargers is located in Maidstone (M20 junction eight) and will soon be joined by locations in Milton Keynes (later in June) and Gretna Green. Ionity has partnered with energy technology specialist Octopus Energy to make sure the entire network is powered by renewable sources.
HPC is widely regarded as essential to the increased adoption of electric vehicles, making long-distance journeys far more viable than the slower 50kW alternatives. Ionity’s Europe-wide charging network will have up to 2,400 chargers installed by 2020 across Europe, 40 of which are currently planned for the UK with more coming in the future.
Check out the Zap-Map link below to locate Ionity's charging station locations.
Click the Zap Map icon above for a full list of UK Charging Points
Want an idea of approximately how much it costs to charge your electric vehicle?
Try Go.compare's handy electric car charging calculation tool:
