With the debate about public electric car charging infrastructure still raging and the demand for EVs becoming ever greater, spurred on by the ULEZ expansion and the introduction of clean air zones, it's often overlooked just how many motorists want to avoid the chaos and plug their EV in at home.
Happily, this is becoming more of a priority – evident in the UK government's legislation that stipulates all new-build houses, as well as flats with parking for more than 10 cars, must have electric car charging facilities.
According to Autocar's sibling title What Car?, there are currently around 400,000 home and workplace chargers available in the UK, with 80% of EV owners choosing to charge at their own abode.
These figures were no doubt helped by the fact that the government would provide £350 towards the cost of having a charger fitted at home, but this is no longer available in quite the same way. To install a home charger now costs anything from around £400 – and can cost more than £1000 in some cases.
As well as different prices, they also charge at various speeds - anything from 3.6kW to 22kW. This, however, depends on whether your building has single-phase or three-phase power.
In the standard single-phase system that most residential properties have, you’ll be able to charge up to around 7kW. Properties with three-phase power can cope with a 22kW charger.
To get the best bang for your buck, we'd recommend a 7kW charger, which will be able to charge your car overnight. For example, a Volkswagen ID 3 will take around 10 hours to charge at one.
With so many available on the market, however, which ones are the best for value, service, reliability and customer satisfaction? With findings from What Car?’s best home charger survey, let's break down the top five.
1. Pod Point
It's good news that Pod Point is one of the UK's largest providers of at-home EV chargers, because its chargers are easy to use, reliable and quite affordable to buy. Gaining the highest score for value, nine out of 10 chargers cost £750 or less overall.
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So this list is probably not the 'best' home chargers!
Ten hours ? , so, the scenario, your car has to be at by say 10pm hopefully ready to go at 8am, say you have an emergency, have to go out after 10pm, can you just unplug it?, i know nothing about EV cars I'm just looking for answers, the do's and don'ts of charging.
Ten hours assumes you're going from zero to full, so if you're doing two or three hundred miles a day that might be a problem. In the real world you're just topping up. Stick to off peak electricity, if you can get the tariff, and it costs peanuts.
Autocar use to be the saviour of the UK motorist , now it seems that they have become a mouth piece for the Government.
What happened to the renowned independent journalist views.
This article highlights a complete lack of empathy for us now , £750 for a home charger - say it again that £750 , ( that's 4500 miles of driving in my diesel Euro 5 car)and then a hugely expensive, deprecating vehicle to boot. Why isn't Autocar standing up to protect the motorist it at least use its reputation and platform for sense.
EVs are simply too expensive, not fit for purpose and the infrastructure not sufficiently capable for every single motorist.
Come on Autocar wake up
The nudge unit are kind and generous with their grants.
As for this article - it's just junk.
"What is the best home electric car charger?"
Zero explaination of what to look for - what's good/bad, zero evidence they've done anything more than a quick cut and paste from a press release. Testing? They used to do that in the old days.
I've an EV on lease - the charger came 'free' with that, but was (of course) paid for via my taxes and energy bills through grants to the charger fitter and the lease co that paid the other half.
And right now there's that latest VW advert on television where the clever little lady has a new VW EV and the stupid man doesn't realise it's an EV. This is 2023, believe it or not and they're still doing this nonsense.
I'm going back to bed, i've had enough.
And one of the large motor chains that sells VWs in my local area is advertising offers on the ID range, describing the ID3 as a "city car". They really do take the motoring consumers for idiots. But maybe is some cases they're right.