UKH

Hi

I'm soon taking delivery of a PHEV and am after some advice in respect of charging.

I'm lucky enough to have a driveway however at present I don't have any outside sockets near where I will be parking. From what I can gather the two options I have available are installing a home charge point (7kwh) or installing an outside socket (2kwh).

I'm currently in rental accommodation with an amenable landlord that I doubt will object to either of those options, however it is an old bungalow with old wiring.

As it is a PHEV rather than full EV the battery capacity is 12kwh, meaning an overnight charge would comfortably charge the vehicle to 100% at 2kwh without the risk of overloading the supply.

If I go down the 3 pin route (to save a little cash) then am I going to regret it after a few weeks?

Thanks

Probably best to get the electrics looked at and a quote for both, see what the actual price difference is, see what the landlord says, it might be less difference that you think. 7kW would be more convenient on occasions where you use the car several times in the day and don't want to run the engine but a 12kWH battery is pretty small, you'd have no problem keeping it charged from a 13A outlet* and you can just run the engine the few times you might need to.

* that's how I currently charge my EV.

jk

An Outlander?  I loved mine, and because I ran it mostly on battery I ended up with an overall record just shy of 100mpg!  You'll find that the usable capacity of the battery is actually around 9-10kWh as it never lets you run it all the way down.

There's no reason you shouldn't use regular 13A charging - you will draw about 2.2kW and it'll take around 4.5 hours to go from 'empty' to full.  Unless you often need (as jkarran suggests) to charge quickly, in which case a faster 3.6kW or 7kW EV charger might be worthwhile.

If you go down the 13A socket route, your electrician has to install a dedicated circuit back to your consumer unit with some overload protection and earthing.  I would guess you're looking at a couple of hundred pounds to install it (as compared to around £500 for an EV charge point).

By the way, if you aren't already with them, then Octopus have several EV tariffs which give you 4 or 5 hours of very cheap electricity overnight.  If you join them via my personal link then we both get a £50 bonus  

share.octopus.energy/eager-eve-607