Electric Cars

Public fast-charging points

Public fast-charging points are often the quickest way to top up your electric car’s batteries if you find yourself running low. You’ll most commonly find them installed in motorway service stations and public car parks.

These chargers are usually rated at 50kWh – this means they can supply a battery with 50kW of energy every hour. As a result, you can charge most electric cars from almost empty to approximately 80% charged in about half an hour.

Some manufacturers recommend you don’t use these rapid chargers too often. Overuse can damage the batteries, eventually reducing the car’s range and shortening the lifespan of the batteries. Fast charging points can be quite expensive to use, too, so you’ll probably be better off using a slower but cheaper public charging point for regular top-ups.

You’ll also be able to charge your car at other, less speedy public charging points. These usually come in 7kWh and 22kWh varieties. Using a 7 kWh charger you’ll be able to boost your car’s range by approximately 30 miles for every hour of charging, while the more powerful 22kWh chargers can add around 80 miles of range in the same period.

Home charging

You can get wall chargers installed in your home or garage, too. These usually come in 7kWh and 3.7kWh outputs. The former will be just as fast as a 7kWh public charger but the slower 3.7kWh system will only be able to add around 15 miles of range every hour. You’ll still be able to charge your car from empty to 100% charged overnight, however.

These wall chargers range in price from less than £300 to more than £1,000, but the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme means you can apply for a Government grant to cover 75% of the purchase and installation cost. This grant is capped at £500.

If you don’t have a wall charger fitted your other option is to charge your car using a conventional three-pin socket. Unfortunately, these are rated at just 3kWh so fully charging your car will take significantly longer as a result. Unless you do very short journeys, it’s best to consider this a backup rather than a regular means of charging your electric car.

It depends on the type of electric car you drive, the batteries it has and where you buy the electricity from.

Take a look at your home electricity bill. You will see a price per kilowatt hour (kWh). The average price these days for your home electricity is around 13p per kWh.

You then need to look at how much electricity your car's batteries can store. Take, for example, the Nissan Leaf - its batteries have a 40kWh capacity.

To work out how much it costs to charge an electric car, you multiply the price per kilowatt hour by the capacity - in the Leaf's example that would be 13p x 40kWh = £5.20.

Charging your car at public charging stations is usually done either by paying a monthly subscription or paying for the time you use to charge your car.

Just like conventional fuel, charging your car at motorway service stations can be more expensive, so check before you travel.

Since 2011, the Government has provided a discount for buyers of low-emission vehicles, to help stimulate the market for electric and plug-in hybrid cars.

This Plug-in Car Grant of up £4500 was provided for a range of electric vehicles that emitted less than 50g/km of CO2 and could travel at least 70 miles in electric power alone. The government called the vehicles that qualified for this discount Category 1 cars.

A grant of up to £2500 off the price of a new car was available on range of hybrid cars. The Government classified these cars as Category 2 and Category 3 cars.

However, on 11 October 2018, the Government announced changes to the Plug In Car Grant scheme. From 9 November 2018 the grant for Category 1 cars is being cut to £3500, while the grant for Category 2 and 3 cars is being scrapped completely.

Category 1 cars

Cars that have CO2 emissions of less than 50g/km and can travel at least 112km (70 miles) without any CO2 emissions at all:

BMW i3 and i3s

Citroen CZero

Hyundai Ioniq Electric

Hyundai Kona Electric

Jaguar I-Pace

Kia Soul EV

Mercedes-Benz B-Class Electric Drive

Nissan Leaf

Peugeot iON

Renault ZOE

Smart EQ fortwo

Smart EQ forfour

Tesla Model S

Tesla Model X

Toyota Mirai

Volkswagen e-up!

Volkswagen e-Golf

Category 2 cars

These vehicles have CO2 emissions of less than 50g/km and can travel at least 16km (10 miles) without any CO2 emissions at all:

Audi A3 e-tron

BMW 225xe

BMW 330e

BMW 530e

Hyundai IONIQ PHEV

Kia Niro PHEV

Kia Optima PHEV

Mercedes-Benz C350 e (with 17 inch rear wheels)

Mercedes-Benz E350 e SE

Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (except Commercial)

Toyota Prius Plug-in

Volkswagen Golf GTE

Volkswagen Passat GTE

Volvo S90 Twin Engine

Volvo V60 D5 Twin Engine

Volvo V60 D6 Twin Engine

Volvo V90 Twin Engine

Volvo XC60 Twin Engine

Category 3 cars

These vehicles have CO2 emissions of 50 to 75g/km and can travel at least 32km (20 miles) without any CO2 emissions at all:

Mercedes-Benz E350 e AMG Line

MINI Countryman PHEV