Electric Vehicles-Infrastructure

[NewcastleFalcon]

Well that was disappointing, just asked for a quote, they say they don't get involved with the grant scheme only fit Zappi and at a fixed price of £1500.

I have watched quite a few video's from Jordan at Artisan Electrics. Here he is talking about the Zappi.

They are quite pricey out the box, and electricians aren't cheap so the price isnt that shocking but, bargain basement it ain't. All chargers qualifying for the grant must be smart these days.

Have to say I have done 16,000 miles in an electric car and haven't got a home charging point. Would be nice if I had, but no intention of shelling out for installation of a smart charger, or even a dumb one.



General info re Electrical side of Charger Installation


Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Well that was disappointing, just asked for a quote, they say they don't get involved with the grant scheme only fit Zappi and at a fixed price of £1500.

When you think about it how many miles of plugging it in at Tesco would £1,500 get you. (on the rapid edit oops...I see that the Tesco Pod-point rapids dont have a 43kW AC charging plug just (CCS and Chademo 50kW DC))

Back of a cigarette packet (£1,500/ £0.35 say per kWh) x 4 miles per kWh =17,142.85 Miles

If you stick to 4,500 miles per the lease=3.81 years
Of course over the 3.81 years you would have still had to generate/consume 4,286 kWh of your home electricity, if you managed to do all of charging up at home, at whatever rate/kWh you could achieve.

Doesn't fit with my own skinflint economics having a "£1,500 fuel station" at home so I haven't got one yet. The convenience however may still be worth the £1,500 for others

Haven't had my calculations marked, apolgies for any inaccuracies should there be any

REgards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

I'm looking for a quote from these guys at the moment Neil, looks to be around £600 installed with the grant.
www.evchargers.co.uk

[NewcastleFalcon]

Pod-point are the ones I've heard of on that list.

Probably worth having a look at that Artisan Electrics bit about the electrical side of it, to avoid any unnecessary upselling by the installers spouting a load of nonsense about your electrical installation and add on works racking the price up.

Another of my reasons for not getting a charge point installed.

and a point of irrelevance, Guess who owns Pod-point.....Electricite de France of course.

You will find if you look around that the Zoe on board charger is described as being "fussy" about earthing. This is probably a good thing, but can throw a wobbler at some public chargers and home chargers if it detects the earthing resistance exceeds the required value by the on board charger.

Thread on it here on Speak EV

Zoe’s are very intolerant of earth resistance issues

As one contibutor put it

Yup its terrible, Zoes wont charge on bad chargers. Its almost as though your Zoe was trying to avoid killing you.

Speak EV regularly ends up in tetchy discussions, and over complication, and I am a infrequent reader rather than a participator on it, but there are folk on there who are particularly well up on electrical matters.

Regards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

You will find if you look around that the Zoe on board charger is described as being "fussy" about earthing. This is probably a good thing, but can throw a wobbler at some public chargers and home chargers if it detects the earthing resistance exceeds the required value by the on board charger.

Regards Neil

This may sound daft at face value but it is a point worth considering. My son-in-law's (lives in Germany) colleague had a Zoe and ran into that problem at the charger nearest his workplace. Being an engineer he simply bought a 1.5m earth spike, connected a few metres of 10mm earth cable to the top in the conventional way and added an aux connector to the earth pin in his charging socket. Now if he comes across a charger on his travels with a poor earth he just drives his spike into the ground and plugs it into the charger socket. Thus the onboard charger is happy and charging commences!! Just means carrying a pre wired spike, a club hammer and some 10mm cable (in case the ground is solid concrete!) in the boot with the charge leads!!

[Dormouse]

as long as you don't hammer the ground spike straight through the underground cable that should be ok.

[Gibbo2286]

The ones at Tesco here are Pod-point.

[Gibbo2286]

The response from evchargers is to request photos of the driveway, the potential locations for the charger, the meter box innards the earth set up for the water and gas mains, the fuse boards, and a plan sketch of the premises layout.
All done now wait and see.

[NewcastleFalcon]

The ones at Tesco here are Pod-point.

With the Zoe at your local Tesco

You should be able to use either of the 2 Available
Rating: 22kW 32A, Supply: 3-phase AC, Socket: Type 2 Mennekes
or either of the 2 Available
Rating: 7kW 32A, Supply: 1-phase AC, Socket: Type 2 Mennekes

If the on board charger charges at 22kW then you will easily be able to top up from 20% to 80% just about 30 mins.
The 7kWh would be just like your home charger and take under 2 hours. to go from 20%-80%

Can't find the nearest rapid rapid charger at 43kW AC, and depending on the Zoe you have it may either have an on board charger that will charge at up at 43kW, or the maximum may be 22kW and even if you are plugged into the 43kW charging point it will only charge up at 22kW.

REgards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Can't find the nearest rapid rapid charger at 43kW AC, and depending on the Zoe you have it may either have an on board charger that will charge at up at 43kW, or the maximum may be 22kW and even if you are plugged into the 43kW charging point it will only charge up at 22kW.
REgards Neil

43kW AC chargers, are a rarity on the road, but plenty of 22kW AC and even more 7kW AC.

Some pricier than others. These osprey chargers have the AC plug at the side which needs your own type 2 cable.
Make sure that whatever cables come with the car are there and havent been removed to sell on. A couple of hundred quid if they are not.

This one is in Chepstow at the Two Rivers Pub, but 40p/kWh is expensive.



Regards Neil

[Hell Razor5543]

I know "The Woodlark" pub in Bordon has a triple car charger, but I cannot tell you who the supplier is, the output or the cost. However, a Google search found this;

https://www.zap-map.com/pts/yg9ktfz/

[Gibbo2286]

On the discussion about filling station disappearing some time ago I mentioned that our village Vauxhall agent had been turned into a grocery shop then taken over by the Co-op, my neighbour tells me that they have a single ev charger installed there now, and he's never seen it used. Must pop round and have a look.

[NewcastleFalcon]

I know "The Woodlark" pub in Bordon has a triple car charger, but I cannot tell you who the supplier is, the output or the cost. However, a Google search found this;

https://www.zap-map.com/pts/yg9ktfz/

Thats an Osprey charger as well 22kW AC chargepoint provided, together with the 50kW DC Chademo and 50kW DC CCS connector. There are a couple of those outside M&S at Alnwick simple use of a bankcard to pay, although a taxi driver said it was cheaper with the app he had.

Regards Neil

[Mandrake]

Well that was disappointing, just asked for a quote, they say they don't get involved with the grant scheme only fit Zappi and at a fixed price of £1500.

That seems very expensive. Was that before or after the grant ??! Back when I got my wall charger in 2017 the OLEV grant was £500 (UK wide) and there was an additional £500 Transport Scotland grant available in Scotland only, so I ended up getting my wall charger for free....

If you're eligible for the £500 OLEV grant (not sure if its still £500 now ?) then I wouldn't expect to be paying any more than £500 out of your own pocket for a wall charger unless any major electrical wiring work needed to be done to the property to install it. I'd shop around a bit more.

There's quite a bit of scuttlebutt chatter among EV drivers that many companies who provide EV wall chargers were "milking" the grants by bumping up the installation cost to match the grants - for example my charger install used both the OLEV and TS grants totalling £1000 yet somehow, magically that was exactly the cost of the installation... and there is no way there was £1000 worth of parts and labour. A cheap Rolec charger like the one I had installed probably only costs them £250 to buy at most and they were only on-site doing the job for about 2 hours plus a 30 minute site survey before taking on the job... so that's a very healthy profit margin!

One thing to consider when weighing up the cost of a dedicated home wall charger is that if the Zoe doesn't come with a 3 pin granny charger, (they were an optional extra) they are about £300 or more to buy - and only let you charge slowly at 2kW. In most cases that money is better spent put towards installing a dedicated wall charger which is safer and much faster as it would charge a Zoe at 7kW or about 3 times faster.

[NewcastleFalcon]

These quotes arrived today, what do you guys think?

Quoted from another thread, but in the somewhat confusing choice of home chargers from a multitude of companies its probably worth shoving on this thread something of a decent guide if we can find one, or someone on youtube who makes a decent stab at it. I have no plans myself to go for one, do a bit of "granny charging" and it works so far.

I started with this (edit. on reflection its not that good, there will be better!), I was pleased it covered the next step up....the commando socket. Still the electricians with all the regs they have to follow, and end up signing the responsibility for, and providing you with the certificates which will be asked for in any conveyance of a property, maybe understandably will not price probably the simplest install cheap. No grant either until you step out of the range of the dumb charger.

https://electriccarhome.co.uk/charging-points/

Commando Socket
Sitting between a normal household socket and a dedicated 13A or 32A EV charger, is the commando socket.

Ohme EV Charger
The Ohme charging cable brings smart charging to any socket, including commando sockets

Commando plugs and sockets were originally designed for industrial settings. It’s a no-nonsense, colour-coded, weather-proof system.

Why would you use a commando socket? They are cheaper than a dedicated EV chargepoint and any electrician can install one. They also offer better safety than a 3-pin plug.

REgards Neil