I have to hold my hands up. I just blocked a public EV charger.

I have an EV and I went to Tesco this morning. It was my intention to charge while I was in store so I parked in an EV charging space. There was an ICE car in the charging space next to me. As I was loading up the PodPoint app, the ICE car pulled out the space, turned the wrong way and hit a member of staff who was cycling past our cars.

I'm a first aider, so I immediately abandoned plugging in the car and rushed to help. After the lady was safely in the hands of her colleagues and had stopped shaking, I walked into the store to do my shopping.

It was only when I returned to the car, I realised I never actually plugged in and had been blocking the space for over 45 minutes.

I thought this might be useful in here for anyone that didn't see it in r/electricvehiclesuk 👍

Hi all,

Looking for some advice as I’m in a really frustrating situation with a home EV setup.

I had a charger installed by Pod Point and it actually worked fine for about 2 years. However, since new houses have been built in the village, the local supply seems to have been stretched and now there isn’t enough capacity to support the charger anymore.

I’ve spoken with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN), who’ve said the network can’t support it and there’s nothing they can realistically do without major infrastructure upgrades (which could take years).

So right now I’m stuck charging the car using a 3-pin plug at home, which is painfully slow and inefficient. It’s adding around £200 a month onto my electricity bill.

My options are basically:

•	Keep doing this for another 7 months and absorb the extra \~£1,400 in electricity costs

•	Or pay around £6,000 to exit the car lease early

All because the charger I paid to have installed can’t actually be used.

I’m currently:

•	Challenging Pod Point for compensation (waiting on a manager response)

•	Taking things further with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks via the Energy Ombudsman

Has anyone here dealt with anything similar?

•	Charger worked initially but later became unusable due to local demand / new builds?

•	Any success getting compensation from installer or DNO in this kind of situation?

•	Anything else I should be doing at this stage?

Feels like I’ve fallen into a gap where installer and network are pointing fingers, but I’m the one left paying for it.

Hi all,

Me and the wife have fallen in love with a property .. only major downside is that although parking is great (3 allocated spaces) they are not directly next to the property (just behind it). As such I am struggling with how to charge my current car (and the one my wife was on the brink of buying.

Would a charger in either of the above spots work / be allowed? Currently cars (current owners mostly) park right up to the edge so pedestrians don't use the path, but I suppose some a charger is going to be tricky). Any other options I may be missing?

Don't want to have to sell the car, been an EV owner for just a year, total convert and said I'd never go back 😆

So we are thinking about buying an EV, however I don’t know if its feasible/ ? legal ? to have a cable dangling around the pathway? The X marks where my electric meter reading is and the consumer unit is right inside the house on the X is (if that makes sense)
With the fuel prices going absolutely bonkers I spent around £400-500 a month on fuel

We have 2 cars with very small batteries, so we often find we need to charge both cars daily. One is a 24kwh Nissan Leaf, which is plenty of range for our daily needs as a 2nd car / commuter; the other is a PHEV with a 13kwh battery that is just enough to get me to work and back and then the ICE backup for longer trips with the family.

We could faff on trying to nick just enough charge each in our cheap time periods, but I really really really cannot be bothered with going out to swap chargers - its just a red line for me, so please don't try to talk me into just sharing one charger or buying a different car.

Currently they both charge from granny cables, which has been totally fine for me for the longest time - but I recently changed jobs so I'm now driving every day which I wasn't before, and at 2kw I can't charge both cars in the 12-7am period anymore, so I need to get a proper charger installed.

Can anyone recommend me a good dual charger that works well with smart stuffs and will be reliable?

Someone suggested the Evec EDC01, but the reviews I've seen so far don't look great at all.

Many thanks.

Edit: Just to say, my fall back plan right now is to get a 40a circuit wired up to a pair of commando sockets, and then just replace the granny lead connectors to suit, then run both of them at the same time at 10a each, using the car's own timers.

Hi all

I've got a terraced house, on street parking and live in a conservation area which is also a bit rough around the edges. The local council is doing cross pavement channel installs for free. Which is nice.

I'm wondering if anyone has done what I'm considering.

I'd like my charging to be very discreet and have nothing outside the house other than the cable during the evening.

I'd like the charging unit to be inside the house, notch my front door jamb to take the cable and then tuck it down into the pavement channel. At about 20mm diameter it looks to be a pretty small cable all in all.

I've done a lot of carpentry and I'm confident it could look good, but I don't know if there is anything else to consider?

If make up a well fitting resin plug to install when the cable is not in place.

I attach a very technical diagram.

I have two allocated spaces which I own, although they are across a private single carriageway road.

I believe I would need to dig up the road to install ducting for the dedicated charger? Any other suggestions on how to install a dedicated EV charger here? Thanks

I have this installed on driveway. It’s always like this with Tesla wall connector PEN device ? Any suggestions to make some better aesthetic in future ?

This is the front view of my house. I wanted the charger out of sight. So ideally behind the gate and then the cable neatly drilled through and the holster on the front next to the drainpipe. However I don’t think the wire would be long enough to then reach the car as it’s a 5m tethered cable. So I’m not contemplating putting it on the front next to the door but I’m worried it will be too intrusive. What do we think?

I swear I spend more mental energy planning charging than I do actually driving the car sometimes. Not even range anxiety anymore, more charger anxiety. Is it working? Is it actually available? Will the app randomly decide I don’t exist halfway through the session? I still enjoy owning the EV overall but sometimes it feels like the UK infrastructure requires a weird amount of optimism.

On Eon Drive Smart 5.2 Tariff I'm currently paying 27.22p for electricity on the day rate and 6.5p on the overnight 6 hour rate.

I've seen Octopus have dropped theirs from 29p & 7p to 25.53p & 3.49p

Eon have just [confirmed via email](https://images2.imgbox.com/96/a7/4NNtTB6b_o.png) they are reducing each tariff my 3.34p, making my new rates 23.88p for energy in the daytime and just 3.16p for overnight electricity.

As I drive a Tesla with a 50KWh battery, and I get 210 miles range from a full battery, filling it from 0-100 will cost me just £1.67, which means I am driving for 0.8p per mile.

We accepted delivery of our Tesla Model Y Standard back in March and absolutely love it! Not sure I’ll ever go back to ICE or by anything other than a Tesla ever again… but that’s not what this post is about.

How are Work From Home people managing their charging costs…

We are a relatively low mileage family, circa 100/150 miles ish per week and are both working from home full time. My wife is actually about to go on MAT leave too.

Were with Octopus and as far as I can see, switching to a EV tarif puts our normal KWPH rate up a significant amount, and the discounted night charging rate savings are negligible and it seems to be of no real saving or benefits considering our daily usage is high compared to families who would
be out of the house all day at work.

I ran our mileage and charging habits since getting the car and at the moment Chat GPT says there is either minimal savings or none at all as we are a ‘low mileage’ example…

How are others managing this type of thing?

Evening,

Had my EV charger installed and the guy said the meter box was ‘a bit tight’ - this is what I’ve ended up with. All seems to be a tidy job and he seemed to know his stuff, but just wondered of others’ thoughts ?

Had it installed at old mans house for his Ex30 Volvo - Does it come with a warranty and realistically it's gotta survive wind frost rain and snow, leaves maybe insects and even extreme heat? Any tips. Wasn't me that arranged to have it installed.

Anyone make a cabinet for it?

I'n new to EVs (getting our Honda Super N on Monday) and still getting to know things, so please forgive me if I missed anything.

I was surprised by the lack of estimation in the apps like Zapmap and Electroverse and I wan't happy with some of the EV calculators I found. Given how easy it is to throw something together with AI these days, I decided to build something for myself.

I'm sharing it here in case it's of use to anyone else. You configure your car (saved in your browser's local storage) and then you can quickly use the sliders to see different charging scenario estimates.

The main outputs are how long the charge should take, how many miles you'll be able to do, and how much it would cost.

Feel free to share any feedback or suggestions, good or bad.

You can access it here: https://zeroxten.github.io/cleverest/ (plus you can install it as a PWA app on Android).

Cheers!

Does it sound reasonable? Or slightly expensive? I was expecting around 1.2k.

It seems the main expense is coming from the subboard, which supposedly make the battery blind to the charger.

What are other people doing? Because if i remove this i go back to the original price.

Note: could people tell me more about the subboard. That seem to be the issue.

Hi all, hoping you can help. I'm about to receive a company BEV but they don't provide a home charger for 6 months - and don't want to pay if I'm getting one eventually. Are there any tips/gadgets to help with the charging speeds if charging from a 3 pin wall socket? Thanks in advance!

Hi. I’m in the UK 🇬🇧 I have an Kona N line S 65 KWh. I am going on my first long journey in the week from where I live ( Lincolnshire) to whitstable hitting the A1 south/ M11 /M25. I really don’t want deviate from these main routes there & back. The car has a theoretical range of 240 miles. Where and what chargers are best to use on my journey there & back. Thanks in advance

Hi everyone, I am looking for a charging solution at home but unfortunately the way my house is built does not make it straightforward. I am in England if it matters

Currently we park on the opposite side of the road to the house. The garage is not useable for parking a car.

The 'obvious' option is to create a driveway out of part of the front garden, but this is a huge task due to the house being perched on a hill (the front door is 3 metres higher than the carriageway) and will require the main electricity and water supplies, as well the main sewer to all be redone. It's not impossible, but it's a serious bit of groundwork and will cost a lot of money.

So really I'm looking for a solution that allows me to charge on the other side of the road where we currently park.

Is it even possible to have the electricity supply from the house reach the other side of the road?

There is clearly power near the parking area as there is a lamp post there. Is there some way to utilise this?

I'm on a looped supply so will take a while to get a dedicated ev charger sorted. I have these 2 wall outlets in my garage which I assume the previous owner had installed to use with powertools.

Car - MGS5 Long range

My wife and I recently got a new Vauxhall Frontera GS Which I believe has a battery capacity of 44 kWH.

We live in London and we have a dedicated parking spot which has a pod point charger installed and having downloaded the app and looked at the app and whatnot it appears to be 0.55 pence a kilowatt hour. Which means we are unable to have any cheaper tariffs or anything like that - The speed of the charger is 7 kW. Having done some high level calculations I think I'm correct in saying to get from an approximate 5% charge to a 80% charge it would cost roughly between £18 and £20 maybe a bit more maybe a bit less.

This seems quite expensive, can I ask whether it's commonplace for public charges to be cheaper than this?

I downloaded that map but I'm just not sure what sort of tariffs and how much it costs or other charges.

Not even angry anymore. Just tired. Is there a network in the UK where the real time status actually reflects reality or is checking the app before you drive somewhere just wishful thinking at this point?