Answered: the electric car questions you've been afraid to ask

Other manufacturers, most notably Kia, have also added paddles to the steering column that allow the driver to increase and reduce the strength of the regen on the fly. 

Battery packs

Electric cars have two electrical systems: a high-voltage one to power the motor and a conventional 12V one to work ancillaries such as the lights and infotainment system. 

The high-voltage system traditionally works at 400V, but in some of the latest EVs it works at 800V. This higher voltage allows a lower amperage and so smaller, lighter electrical cabling, as well as enabling ultra-rapid charging.

All production EVs on the UK market use lithium ion battery chemistry, but this in itself varies, with different ingredients used in the battery cells, depending on what the manufacturer chooses. 

One of the most popular formulations has been lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC), but many manufacturers are trying to lessen their use of nickel and cobalt by reducing the content of the metals or switching to alternatives such as lithium iron phosphate (LFP). 

Battery packs are made up of modules, each one of which comprises a number of individual cells. These come in various shapes, such as cylinder, pouch and prism.

The first wave of EVs had air-cooled batteries, but the latest models have liquid cooling.

Electric car range is affected by ambient temperature, driving style, air- con usage and more, and some EVs estimate their remaining range better than others.

Home charging

An EV works best in terms of running cost and convenience if you can charge your car at home. Drivers who don’t do many miles can get away with the trickle-charge lead that’s usually supplied with the car and plugs into a domestic three-pin socket.

It draws around 3kW (about the same as a kettle or household electric heater) so will top the EV’s battery up with around 3kWh of energy every hour, giving around 10 miles of range, depending on the car.

The alternative is a wallbox charger. These are available from a number of manufacturers and must be professionally installed on a dedicated electrical circuit. 

They provide charge at around 7kW so boost range by around 23 miles each hour, depending on the EV.

Buyers can choose between an untethered cable, which must be plugged into both the car and the charger, and a tethered cable, which is stowed on the wallbox when not in use. 

For those who have a solar system at home, there are smart chargers that offer a number of different modes, including the ability to charge only when surplus solar energy is available, which would otherwise be directed to the grid.  

Scheduling and phone connectivity

You can configure an EV’s climate system and charging start and finish times by creating a schedule via the infotainment system and in most cases via a dedicated smartphone app created by the manufacturer.

Climate scheduling is especially useful if, say, you leave for work at regular times and would like the cabin preconditioned to a comfortable temperature. 

Smartphone apps allow you to do the same thing on the fly, plus they usually have a number of other functions, like remote locking and unlocking, warnings if the car is left unlocked and status information such as available range. 

Charge scheduling is also useful if you have a solar system at home and want your EV to start charging when excess power is available that might otherwise be sent to the grid. 

Cheaper home energy tariffs

The ability to set schedules for when an EV plugged into a wallbox or trickle charger starts and finishes charging comes into its own when you subscribe to off-peak energy tariffs.

Several energy providers offer EV-focused tariffs of as low as 7p per kWh in the early hours, so you can plug your EV in but set the schedule to charge only during the off-peak time, which might be between 12am and 7am, depending on the supplier. 

Using a 7kW home charger, that could give close to 195 miles of range at a cost of less than 2p per mile. 

Plug types

Fifty years ago, an epic struggle broke out between JVC and Sony to dominate the home video tape market with their respective VHS and Betamax formats.

VHS eventually won, making Betamax obsolete, and the two names came to symbolise competing standards. EV charging plugs went the same way a few decades later, which is why there are different plug formats out there, causing some confusion. 

The first Nissan Leafs came with a Type 1 ‘J-Plug’ for AC charging and a Chademo plug for direct current (DC) rapid charging, which was the standard in Japan.

Meanwhile in the EU, the Type 2 Mennekes plug became the standard for AC charging and the Combined Charging System (CCS) plug for DC rapid charging – so called because it combines the Type 2 plug with an additional two pins for carrying DC straight into the EV’s battery.

When you arrive at a public charger, Chademo plugs (if present) are easily identifiable as bright blue and CCS plugs as plain white. 

CCS has become the VHS of the EV charging story, having become the dominant standard for rapid charging.

Even Tesla is moving away from its North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector: the Tesla Model 3 is now equipped with a CCS socket and its public Supercharger network now also supports CCS. 

The plugs have so many pins because some are for communication between the car and the charger and others to actually transmit current.

When an EV is plugged in, the car and charger talk to one another and only when both ends are happy does the power transmission begin. The connectors aren’t ‘live’ until that point, which is why they’re safe to use in wet weather.

Type of charging

The thorny question of how fast an EV’s battery can be charged depends to some extent on how much power is available to charge it. There are four main generic categories of charger available: slow, fast, rapid and ultra-rapid. 

Slow charging is the type used for home charging, with AC current coming from a trickle charger connected to a normal domestic supply or a 7.4kW wallbox. 

Fast charging at 22kW with AC current is the least common and requires an industrial three-phase electrical supply. Ironically, it’s also not that fast, so it isn’t that useful when you’re on the move and need a ‘splash and dash’.