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

We have this exact situation. And it's fine. Yes you have to plan. In the last 5 years there has only been one occasion where I suddenly could have done with a 'quick full tank' and I just went to my nearest supercharger and plugged in for 20 mins, which I used to rearrange my work day due to a minor emergency.

Look at your wider local infrastructure to. I also take advantage of the slower chargers on the outskirts of our town and leave on charge either overnight or during day but it's only a 20 min walk for me.

You can’t run modern industrial civilisation without fossil fuels. It’s just not possible.

While you can make transport use less liquid fuels, it would be better by doing public transit properly, not helping Big Auto sell expensive new vehicles instead.

I’m sure this myth busting is in no way paid for by such car companies, no siree.

Not sure why you were trying to promote hybrid cars earlier then

Because they use fewer REM deposits than EVs and don’t weigh two metric tonnes and need entirely new infrastructure? Maybe those reasons?

This might shock you, but you can hold two views at the same time; that you can move people off gas guzzlers on to cheaper, more economical hybrids whilst also working on public transit, which won’t magically materialise this year.

People are so negative about electric cars. We switched a few weeks ago and most people looked at us like we were mad. Most of our journeys are short, ferrying the teens around sort of thing, I work from home, dh works a 5min drive away. So far it has been great. We only just got our charger installed a few days ago but it costs us just less than €2 for about 200km range. We will only need to charge a couple of times a week really meaning most weeks we will be spending €4-6 on electric. Petrol is about €1.80 per litre. It's an absolute no brainer for us.

I think it’s mainly because they feel they have to have 500 miles range to feel “safe”, even though people rarely do a fraction of that daily. If you’re a travelling salesman or engineer or something, sure, maybe you should be concerned (and I have personal experience of those concerns being raised).

Everyone else? EVs are good enough. The charging infrastructure is what is lacking. We do NOT need more Range Rover sized or heavier electric vehicles to accommodate battery packs that can do a cross country journey in one charge. It’s needlessly wasteful.

They are fine until you want to go to an area with hardly any chargers! They go much shorter distances than manufacturers say and you need to stop to charge - somewhere! We have had two hybrids and they at least don't have range anxiety. We have seen ev owners who cannot get their cars charged due to charging points not working or they are the wrong chargers. It's fine to charge at home but without that, it's a lot of planning in some holiday areas.

I don't have a charger at home and it's fine, I live within 5 minutes walk of about 10 chargers, plus I can charge at work. Once a week I do a 180 mile round trip, luckily I can charge at my destination.

The closest charger to my house is near a supermarket and some other shops, I tend to charge once a week and always combine it with another chore like buying bread, returning bottles, going to the post office etc.

I rarely have to use a rapid charger.

Not tested it out on holiday yet, but I am sure it will be fine

I live in the country!!! Of course I go across country. Townies are fine with ev.

@CuteOrangeElephant

This will wholly depend where your holiday is and how far it is. If you need to charge on the way, be aware lots of chargers are not working. Also many are not rapid. We have several cars and no plans for ev. Ev sales have stalled for a reason. Also depreciation can be horrendous so private owners are very careful with their own money.

I have an EV and do charge at home. However I regularly go to two offices of my employer with free chargers. We have hybrid working and there seems to be competition for chargers mid week but no issues getting one on a Monday and Friday. I have charged mine away from home 4 times in a year - 3 times for a journey over the range and once because I forgot to charge it the night before an important face to face meeting. Had enough to get to the meeting but had to charge to get home again. None of these times was it difficult to find a rapid charger.

EV are the Betamax of the future.

Tell that to the manufacturers, because they don’t think they are good enough and are investing millions on more powerful batteries and fire retardant measures.

A lot of them are actually cutting back as they’ve been losing money, even at present prices, in the end about. Ford recently scaled back all EV plans after bad sales and are focusing more on hybrids still and ICE trucks.

Meanwhile, BYD can sell you a Seagull for less than half the price of the cheapest Western EV. And it’s better too.

Look what Xiaomi is doing.

The Seagull is the size of a Fiat 500!!! What family car will it be better than? I cannot see any comparison or evaluation of it against any UK available car. We don't know what it's like but it's a town car.

I have an EV, work charging and no home charger. It's fine. Absolutely worst thing that happens is I have to drive to the fast charger, 3 mins away, and queue for it. But we're getting a new bank of fast chargers 5 mins away, and I will eventually learn to not go at 7.30 on a Thursday when everyone else seems to rock up!

Had it for 5 years and I've lost no capacity yet.

Right. I said cheaper than the cheapest EV in the West. Nowhere did I state it was going to be some obnoxious SUV behemoth like most cars people want. You can happily get one of those, but the price goes up, naturally.

The Xiaomi above is fine for the average family.

Incidentally, the EU and USA are trying to ban Chinese car imports because they know they’d be bought up en masse given how cheap they can be made.

We are very happy with our MG4, we have the XPower which is an AWD so it doesn't have the same range as the long or extended but it still works well for us.

Sad that people are now buying Chinese cheap cars! Just to boast about being "green".

Why?

Sad that every thread about electric cars attracts people that are against them.

I have a hybrid with about 40 miles electric range. I run mostly on electric for the short journeys, only for long ones I need the petrol, which is probably less than 1 in 10 trips.

You can charge from home on the granny charger fine, it takes about 1 hour per 10 miles. I would recommend you make sure your electrics are up to it because the constant 10A for 4 hours is probably a much greater demand than anything else in your house.

I think if you can charge at work, plus the fact you are only doing 24 miles when you do go to work, you should have ample range provided that continues.

The problem will be if for some reason you cannot charge at work or circumstances change. If your mileage is low you should be able to do it all on a granny charger if you have power access at home.

Your mileage doesn't sound so great that it would be a great chore to charge up say once every two weeks if you do lose the works access and cannot use the granny charger. But remember all commercial charge points are pretty expensive, so you won't get the great benefit of electric which is cheap fuel.

Why, do you want some sort of echo chamber where people just say nice things and no one tells the truth?

OP is asking for practical experiences with EVs.

A negative experience having an EV without a drive contributes to OPs question.

Negative opinions from posters that don't even own an EV, and do not want to own an EV, do not.

There’s a lot of FUD about relating to EVs now. Like I say, the range anxiety thing is overblown UNLESS you want to do hundreds of miles daily, then that problem factors into the infrastructure thing.

Prices are coming down, or will be given the market. I just think some people may be better with a PHEV than a full on EV, or a small EV instead of a a big hybrid. And only if they need a new car. Naturally buying something you don’t need does not make you “green” or save you money, unless it’s a total banger with horrific mileage.