To ask how to charge a Nissan Leaf.

[Hateam]

Getting a second hand Leaf this week. The home charger won't be installed for 2 weeks.

Don't have any electric car apps or accounts.

Can I just go up to a charger at a Morrisons with a bank cars and pay with a card there and then just like buying petrol or do I have to book a charger and pay online/in advance?

Also any advice re apps, accounts' prebooking etc would be useful.

The Zapmap app is great for showing location of chargers, prices, availability etc. No need to book, just turn up. You often need to download the app for the charger type ie podpoint- you just top up your account, plug in & let it charge. Some chargers are faster than others too, faster charger generally more expensive. Motorway chargers more expensive but usually very fast & you usually just pay contactless for these.

Congratulations, it's a lovely car and very fun to drive. I highly recommend joining the UK Nissan LEAF owners group who will help you with all things leaf related. You should be supplied with two cables. One will have a 3 pin plug on the end and can be plugged in at home before your charging point is installed. That is commonly called a "granny cable". The other will have what is called a "type 2" socket on one end to go into your new home charger or public "fast" chargers (either 3.3 or 6.6KW for old/ new leaf). If your car is a newer leaf (2018 onwards) the other end will look the same and plug in to the smaller of the two charging ports on the car. If it's an older one then the other end is a bit different in shape and us called a "type 1" and also plugs into your car. To do "rapid charging" (direct current, hopefully about 50KW) the leaf has a chademo port. The plug for that is tethered to public charging units e.g. at motorway services. Most public chargers you can just use a contact less payment on debit or credit card. A few, public fast chargers including notably podpoint often at Tescos need an app and loading credit on before charging. Zapmap is a useful app to locate public charging points (filter it down to "type 2/ Mennezes" and "chademo".

Annoyingly there is no "standard" which means some chargers need an App, some need an RFID card and some will take contactless.

Figure out which chargers near you will be your charging space until your home charger gets fitted and check them out to see what they need. Ones that need Apps aren't always in good mobile signal places so check this (you would think this would be considered but alas no), and some Apps are better than others. I find Podpoint pretty reliable. ChargePlaceScotland used to be free and were reliable using the RFID card, but are pretty abysmal these days with providers being very tardy in their maintenance and repairs.

Using your CHadEMO will be expensive so try and find a slower charger in your area where you can leave your car a few hours. My train station is a 10 minute walk away and is empty in the evenings so I used that as part of the dog walking routine early to late evening when I was waiting for my home charger.

Also if you are getting Octopus - order there Electroverse RFID card. It's useful and often gives decent discount on some charging locations when you are out and about.

Thank you for your responses. They've been very helpful!

We have had a 65 Reg leaf since late 2019. We were going to get a 7kw charger installed but between trying to choose a provider and then covid, we never got round to it.

We already had an outside plug installed next to the drive, so just started with using the ‘granny charger’ overnight and actually it worked for our needs so we didn’t bother upgrading.

Good luck, OP. I absolutely love our little leaf, i hope you have as much fun with yours!