Electric car with no charger at home?

[Leafywool]

The lease on our current petrol car is up soon and we need to be looking at a new one. There's some very good deals on EV at the moment and DH is really keen, but me not so.

We live in a terraced house with no drive. We do have access to parking around the back of our house as there's a wide alleyway and houses on our side are allowed to park there. But we live in a Grade 2 listed house in a World Heritage Site so I don't think we could even get a charger installed even if we wanted to as there's lots of restrictions on what we can and can't do. I've never noticed any other houses in this area with one installed so I assume not.

I don't drive the car much at all, only to the supermarket or if I take dd somewhere. DH commutes 12 miles each way Mon & Tues and his office has free charging points in the car park. Outside of this he doesn't use the car much either, usually only to go to suppliers for our business or if we go on a day out (quite rare as DH works weekends too).

Would it be a royal pain in the arse to have an EV with no means to charge at home? There's a Shell station at the top of our street that has just installed loads of charging points and there's loads of other places close by which have charging points (we are on the edge of a city.) DH thinks he could charge at work and it would do us all week. I have no idea!

Would love some opinions

Not in winter no.

Personally I wouldn't have one if I didn't have somewhere at home to charge it. What happens if the chargers at work are taken or out of use?

It varies wildly! You need to identify the chargers you would be likely to use and check them out.

@poster22445 is your terraced with no driveway?

It's a lease so resale value not a problem. Leasing works v well for us as we aren't interested in buying

detached with driveway
versus terraced with no driveway

rather different proposition

It might be worth contacting the council planning next week when everything is reopened and ask about the charger installation - would the approve one at the back of the house - as it can’t be seen from the road/front of house, they may be more lenient than they would if you were installing at the front. Worth a call as it sounds like that would swing it for you.

it might be worth factoring in while dh can fill up for free at work now, over the next year or so, more people will be buying EVs and he might have to compete for the charging points.

Would you not be better with a hybrid perhaps? Cheaper and you don't have to deal with the issues of charging. A PHEV if you really insist.

i’m not surprised
you were very much suitable for it with detached property and own driveway
and it is a very “green” request so would be illogical to refuse

I work in the industry, it is not misinformation, the fires are rarer, but when they go, you better get your arse out and fast, you need an escape plan. Always. Get out. Each battery cell will ignite the other, they burn at several hundred degrees. And the cells right now have no protection.

Yes they are all but giving them away now, can’t get them off the forecourts,

I’ve got an EV. No way would I not have a charger at home. There are loads of things that could potentially cause an annoying issue.

Public chargers go wrong- you may have say 20miles range left and plan to go to a certain charger/ that’s not working. Etc etc.

Chargers do take a while, so factor in how long the charge is. Depends on the Wattage.

Are the work chargers always available? Would he be guaranteed one? Again could get to work and someone’s plugged in for the day. You’ve then got to charge on way home and get home 2/3hrs later than planned.

As above is there any way you could use a normal 3 pin plug thru a window or something? This does take asaaages but overnight say from teatime May fully charge.

I've had an EV in a terraced house with no drive/charger for nearly 3 years. I love it and would never go back! It can be a pain on long journeys for sure as the infrastructure is far from perfect, but otherwise we have found it pretty easy to charge when we need to. If I had a charger at work, I'd think it mad not to.

We got a hybrid in a similar situation (terrace, no drive, quite a lot of local slow chargers including two on our road, but can’t guarantee they’re not all busy).

I wouldn’t want to be entirely reliant on a local charger happening to be available when I needed it, and anyway the on-street chargers aren’t much cheaper than petrol.

Sorry to check, you have dedicated parking at the back of your house, so if you could get permission for a charger on the back of your house, would that work to charge? If so it’s definitely worth asking.

If your husband can definitely charge at work every day or after every journey to work then that's helpful. I've a charger at home but when I was awaiting install it was mega expensive charging at Shell. I would have severe anxiety around range knowing I couldn't charge at home if I were you. But that really will come down to how much you use the car and only you know what that is realistically like.
I have a charger now and inevitably either mine or my husband's car is charging every day, if not both cars (we are hybrid though)

Slightly different with full electric though as the range will be so much higher than a hybrid which is just a few miles really. I'm in the same position, if I couldn't charge for whatever reason it's not the end of the world as I'd use petrol but if you've got a range of hundreds of miles it's different.

Car fires in general are much slower to happen, if they do happen, and much easier to deal with. EV fires are a thing that require specialist equipment to even deal with, burn very hot, and cannot just be doused with a hose. The cells also can reignite even if extinguished, which requires EVs after a collision to be quarantined in special areas in the event of another runaway.

Consider how often an EV is involved in a life threatening fire compare to an ICE, and how one has a tank that can be reasonably protected versus over a metric tonne of delicate electrochemical cells and coolant in an EV.

We bought an electric car a few weeks ago and just got a charger installed yesterday. It was a bit of a pain. Public charging is expensive. It felt like we were always thinking about range and when to go top up. We wouldn't have gotten electric without being able to get a home charger.

I would normally say not to do it without a home charger but when your DH has free charging at work and in the position you sound to be in then it does sound like a real money saver for you. You might need public charging sometimes (as do we with a home charger if we are going on a road trip) but there are loads of chargers about and the prices are broadly the same as filling with fuel.

Is that the NTSB data from a year or so back? I recall that not having a particularly robust statistical dataset for what was being suggested. EVs are still relatively new and not as widely popular as ICEs, although I agree that being in a burning car = a bad time.

Can I just say that I literally did wrap my electric car (mercdedes eqb) around a tree l month ago - car was a write off and all airbags deployed, fairly bad accident. It didn't combust, there was no hint of fire! Fire were called out and scanned it with thermal cameras and it was fine.

OP - we have an electric car and I wouldn't do it without a charger at home. It makes life a lot easier being able to just plug in at home , especially if you've run it down quite low , the other thing is it's considerably cheaper . We charge overnight on the Intelligent Octopus tariff and it costs about £3 to put 150 miles on. A rapid charger costs around £25 for the same.

What an absolute faff! I roll up to BP and fill up with diesel.

I roll out of bed and plug my charger in at home 😀