EV charger tethered or untethered

[Nothanks17]

First post and not much juice to it all, sorry!

Please help - we have looked at the website versions of pros and cons of both tethered and untethered chargers for the vehicle and simply can not make a decision! Would rather hear from people who have actually lived with the choice of one or another.

Any info about theft or how breakable / inconvenient they are would be so helpful. Or any tips. Its very expensive and we wouldn't be able to simply change our mind.

YABU - tethered is better
YANBU - untethered is better

Promise my next post will be juicier.

Ours is tethered (tesla charger) and the car has a cable in the boot for charging on non-tesla chargers while out and about - which we almost never do.

Benefits: never accidentally leave the “roving” cable behind. Don’t need to put the “home” canle anywhere - just unplug and hang it on the hook and leave.

Disadvantages: if that cable got damaged -maybe gets knocked off the hook and goes under the wheels - not sure if we can just replace the cable or do we get a
whole new charger ?

We went for untethered due to risk of cable theft.

I would go with tethered. At home it means you’re not scrabbling around in your boot on the rain to find your cable - it’s just there ready to plug in.

The cables are quite heavy if you have an untethered charger and would be a bit of a pain to lug in and out of the car - also they get wet and dirty, so not very pleasant to be winding it up to put back in your boot when you’re dressed ready for work in the morning!

As the previous poster said, you need to have the cable in your boot all the time “just in case.” I have never once used it though.

Just make sure when you order a charger with a tethered cable how long the cable is and make sure it reaches to where you need to easily.

Surely an untethered cable is much easier to steal?

We went untethered so cable always stays with car whether at home or out & about.

We have tethered – if you had different types of EV, then you may need different cables. We chose tethered because it's neater and can't be stolen.

We have untethered. We live on a main road and didn't want a cable left in view when not charging. We have 2 cables, anyhow, as we got one with the car and one with the charger.

It lives in the car when not in use.

We're not worried about someone trying to steal it when it's charging as we're home then and would notice!

But a tethered one can’t be stolen unless someone wanted to risk electrocution to cut through the cable with bolt cutters to steal a useless cable with a cut end. It’s literally built into the charger and doesn’t come off at all.

They're not useless! They contain loads of copper.

We have just bought tethered on the advice of someone who has had an EV for longer than us. According to Octopus it's a universal charger and will fit more than one make of car.

Thought it would be easier than having to attach the cable which comes with the car every time it needs charging esp as we want to charge it overnight (cheap rate) and don't fancy messing around with it late at night.

We’ve had a plug in hybrid or EV for over 10 years, and for home use always go tethered. You’ll get mightily fed up of trying to get a cold wet cable back into the car otherwise, and it really needs to be in the car because you don’t know where you will next need it! So, one always stays in the car, and when you get home you just plug in using the tethered charger and leave it.

Yep annoyingly lots of the public tethered chargers have their cables cut off for the copper. Apparently they get about £8 per cable, yet £1k ISH to fix the damage.... Our local ones aren't being repaired anymore :( wish they do some type of sting operation on these scrap metal dealers who buy up all the stolen cables.

Totally tethered. Total pain to be digging in the boot every charge time. You want it to just be an easy part of your routine

Tethered. You’ll be grateful when it’s raining and you don’t have to bundle a wet cable into the boot! I have an untethered cable which lives in the boot as well in case I use a slow charger while I’m out and about, but definitely get tethered on the home charger.

Definitely tethered. We just get home and plug in, no faffing with getting the cable out . The untethered cable just lives in the car for when we're out - although it actually has been used about twice, as we really only use fast chargers if we need to charge when out .

You’re right - tethered is much better, however you don’t need to go out late at night to plug it in, you should just be able to plug it in when you get home and set a time for it to start charging with either your car or the charger.

We went for untethered. Our charger is really small and neat. We thought a cable would look untidy if it was tethered.

We keep the cable in the boot anyway so it's not been an issue

I also went for untethered. It means that if thar I change car / move someone can just buy a cable to suit a different car.

"You’re right - tethered is much better, however you don’t need to go out late at night to plug it in, you should just be able to plug it in when you get home and set a time for it to start charging with either your car or the charger."

@ATuinTheGreat thanks for this. Just got it today - will have to work out how to do it!

Tethered here. It’s a lot less faff. I think we’ve used our untethered cable twice in two years, unfortunately both times when we’ve been on holiday and had a boot full of luggage so had to empty it to get to the untethered cable.

Thank you everyone so much for the advice and tips. It's been really helpful to read them and make a decision x