I have a VW ID4 coming Feb/Mar and have not ordered the free motability charger due mainly to the BP Pulse fiasco. I will be relying on the public charging system rather than bothering with the home charger as I can’t be asked to put up with the probable hassle and additional cost if my install is not a standard one.
I did contact a few local installers but as most of these seem to be inundated with work (solar installs taking priority) can’t do one till next summer or even get out to me to do a survey to see what is involved with my property to cost an EV charge point.
My property is a 1930’s house but has had electrical upgrades over recent times I have an unlooped supply and smart meters and also 100amp main fuse along with the required 25mm sq tails. The only area where I am not sure is whether or not I have an earth bonding issue which was pointed out when I had my smart meters installed in May this year.
If I were to be faced with getting my own charger installed I expect a bill of £1000 or more could quite easily be forecast and the £350 gov grant expires next April IIRC. In addition you still have to pay for the electricity to charge the vehicle which is currently 20p per KWH and the cheap 5p KWH rates for 3-4 hrs a day are not that cheap when faced with the rest at normal rate of 25p per KWH. So if you use a lot of electricity in those other 20 hrs a day you may well be worse off with one of those deals in addition to recovering the install cost over time.
Public charging within a 3-4 mile range of my house seems to be reasonably easy to get and a new Osprey 4 bay 150kw station available 24/7 and is just a 10/15 min drive from my property. Yes it costs 40p per hr and a 20%-80% charge on one of those will cost me £12.48 and take 20 mins or £10.92 and 40 min on a nearer 50kw charger.
So before I recover the £1000 install cost of charger I could have had 83 fast charges so that would pay for charging for 2 years of usage at 6k miles a year. That also excludes what electric I would use at home at 20p + per kw hour so take that into consideration and it would be 3-4 years at least before I would come out ahead with a home charger.
My view is why have the hassle and cost of an EV home install when I can get public charging done fairly easily. Lets face it in 3-4 years time when the cost of a home charger would have been covered quite a lot will have changed.
The next car we get will have a much longer range battery, wireless and other methods of charging will have evolved and who knows it may not even be electric so any current home charger will be obsolete.
At least that’s my view