Any EV owners about who can reassure me about charging costs?

[HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd]

I have a e-Mokka on order and now I’m wondering if I should be worried about charging costs.

I will only be able to trickle charge at home. So will rely on charging stations.

Are charging station costs going up as sharply as domestic fuel prices?

(For anyone who recognises my NN, Yes I have too much time to think this week and yes, I am preoccupied with living costs.)

YABU = it’s quite affordable
YANBU = yes it’s expensive and increasing - panic.

I don't have a charger at home so I only use public points. My council rates are 25p per kWh whether it's a slow 7kw charger or a rapid 50kw. You will be able to find the local council tariffs online somewhere. I use the Chargeplace Scotland app and I have a card from them to pay and pay a direct debit to them every month. Beware that some places have overstay charges and here those depend what type of charger you are using ie the 50 you can only stay an hour or else you get a £5 overstay charge.
The next council area to me have all free charging so I try to use that if I'm out in that area. My car has a 33w battery so I can fill up for £8/9 and that does me around. 150/160 miles. I tend to stick it on a fast charge x 2 a week while I walk the dog nearby.

We have a Zoe, charge her up overnight (we are looking at changing our electric to Octopus and taking their EV rate)
octopusev.com/charging/tariff

Lots of charging points round us, download the zap map app and you can start looking at charging points and their costs. Out local Lidl has free charging points and chargeable rapid points.. not looked at what Tesco offers.

I should say we trickle charge her overnight...

Trickle charging at home will be fine as long as you don’t do high mileage. Mine takes 12 hours from empty to full but it’s never empty. I very rarely do more than 20 miles so it doesn’t need more than 3-4 hours to get it back up to full.

yes you will be exposed to rising energy costs but you’ll save a fortune compared with petrol/diesel long term

I have an EV. I charge overnight. Slow charge and it’s not very expensive. Cheaper than fuel.

the only issue you may have is that you can’t have charging cables across the roads and paths. I know pod point won’t install a charger unless it meets those requirements

Have a look at Zap-map. It will show you all the chargers around and the operators, so you can look at their sites and find the costs per kWh. The Shell network (much bigger than just Shell garages) is showing 66p per kWh on a 50kw charge. Prices have gone up a lot recently, but it's still cheaper than petrol.

I did work out before I ordered that even if I had to hire a vehicle for holidays and exceptional circs I would still be better off, and I want to minimise my environmental guilt.

These RL anecdotes are much more confidence inspiring than what the motor industry have to say.

We went south of Tours - we broke our journey each way in Normandy to ease any charging worries. We'd have been fine IF Eurotunnel hadn't had a massive delay - so we weren't able to fully charge up before our train at the Eurotunnel terminal (but we were able to change up a bit). We then arrived later than planned in France, a lot more frazzled and had some serious charging stress the first 24 hours as we had missed the first Ionity charger...and were rushing to make our accommodation booking...we also limited air conditioning use in the heatwave which made the journey really hard and difficult. The battery drain to use air con was not worth losing miles at that points....

We were saved by McDonalds of all places in Normandy. The local charging points were mostly not very user friendly (we had read up and had Chargemap card) or were out of order. But we finally got sorted with Ionity near Le Mans and after that all was well for the rest of the trip. We used Ionity for reliable - if expensive - charging. But it was a nice surprise to find local chargers which worked and were easy to use.

We would do it all again. BUT a Tesla would be a dream abroad - at the Baie de Somme Ionity station we finally found on the way back there were about 15 Tesla chargers - very underused - and about 6 non-Tesla charges which were in very high demand...sharp elbows were needed to ensure you weren't queue jumped.

I'd love to use the Lidl chargers abroad but we tried several that were not working; some that used very different connectors; and some that just made no sense at all...all fine if you know the lie of the land but travelling I want something easy, reliable and assured. At least Ionity mostly provided that (even if we did have to wait for 45 mins at one stop as all the chargers had 'just' started charging when we arrived).

I love our electric car for local journeys (up to about 100 miles away - we can very comfortably do over 00 miles without charging, with air con in summer with our battery). Anything over that and it becomes a bit more of a planning situation. But we've travelled a fair bit in the electric car and always managed to charge it...sometimes with more stress admittedly!

• we can very comfortably do over 200 miles! Not sure where my '2' went....

Thank you this is all good detailed info. I do love a good ferry jaunt.

If you check your vehicle spec for the charger type and then download Zap-Map you will be able to check what’s available near you?
Also is there any way to run an ordinary plugin cable at home and run it to the car?