Over the last few years, I’ve lived in a variety of places, each of which had different charging challenges. Between moving out of and eventually into houses where I could install Zappis, I lived in
- A flat with no possible way of charging. I had to drive to a car park with 8 x 7kw chargers and walk 1.5 miles home, leaving it there most of the day to charge up. Or go to local rapids, but they were few in number and often in use or out of service.
- A flat with a window opening to the shared car park where I could plug the granny charger cable in to the kitchen socket and arrange with neighbours to let me use the nearby parking spot.
- House with off road parking but the landlord refused to consider putting in a charger, so I ran the granny cable out of the lounge window.
- House with off road parking but not staying there long enough to put in a charger, so ran the granny cable under the garage door.
When finding somewhere to live, the ability to charge was a factor. Not being able to plug in at all was so inconvenient that if I didn’t already have the EV, there is no way I’d chose to have one. And it set my beliefs that the UK charging infrastructure is absolutely inadequate.
Having to live with the cable running through a window was a security risk and let cold air in.
Having to charge with a granny cable for several years wasn’t ideal. Only melted one.
This is why it’s so important that this particular issue is addressed well.
It’s ok for us lucky people with a drive and the budget to install a charger. What the hell are people living in terraced houses who compete for parking spaces supposed to do?
Lamppost charging isn’t going to work in many cases because the supplies to the lamp are ok for an LED, but you start pulling 7kw for hours and the underground cable will melt. Even sustained 3kw might fail.
When they put 3 phase in for my house, I got to see the cables running to my neighbours, my house and the nearby pathway lamp. In that case, the lamp supply looked like it was the same sized cable as a house. But it might not be the same in all cases.
Putting a gully from the boundary of a property in the pavement sounds like an ideal solution if the cover can be adequately secured. I wonder how much the council charge. It should be less than dropping a curb, which takes weeks to organise and costs £ hundreds.
You’re still looking at long cables. You’re still looking at cooperation between neighbours. Which shouldn’t be a big deal, but can be.
And if I were using a gully, I’d need to put up a security camera monitoring the car for peace of mind. Actually if I were parking on street, I’d want the camera anyway.
My 2p.