Mg4 new owner

[bomber]

Well it's been a long time coming, finally the mg4 will be delivered on Tuesday. Due to constant delays with delivery dates I haven't had chance to get a home charge point fitted. I wanted to gather people's thoughts on home charging vs public charging taking into account cost of charger and cost charging electricity home vs punlic rates, availability, convenience etc.

 

[Ian Key]

If you can get a home charger installed and can afford it just do it for the convenience.

Do you really want to have the car charging for hours connected to a 13amp socket or having to keep going to the nearest public charger and waiting with it in all weathers?

 

[Rolfe]

Depends how far away the public charger is. I'm sitting in my own house while the car is on the village charger five minutes walk away. I got home just before seven on 19% charge and since I want the car again tomorrow morning I just connected it to the charger on the way home and walked the rest.

I expect to get it to about 75% before I run out of time (maximum allowed is 55 minutes) and I'll top it up and let it balance charge on the granny charger overnight.

£1K buys a lot of electricity. And the village charge point is only 30p per unit. So it all depends on how you're placed.

 

[Cocijo]

The way public charging prices are unless you can home charge it’s not that cheap to charge your EV using public chargers and not far off running an ICE.
The added benefit of having a home charger is that you can take advantage of the cheap overnight rates offered by some suppliers - e.g octopus around 10p. Public charging rates can be anything from 4 to 7 times this cost.
Yes, you can get quite a few charges for the cost of a home charger (c£1000?), but the added convenience and the payback over time makes sense if you can afford it.
The way I look at it is (if you can have one installed at home) that a home charger should be factored in to the total price of the car when getting your EV.

 

[siteguru]

A home charge point is always better ... but costs are a key consideration. (I was lucky enough to get a free home charge point [not related to my MG4 purchase], so for me it was a no-brainer).

 

[Rolfe]

Bomber hasn't said whether he has the capability to use his granny charger at home, although if he is in a position to have a wall box fitted then I'd assume he is able to do this. He also hasn't said if he has any access to charging at work, or indeed what his regular mileage is. It all has to be factored in.

In my position my regular mileage is low, and my granny charger can usually keep up with me. If it can't, then there is a nearby public charge-point which gives 50KW charging for 30p per KWh. This is actually 1p cheaper than my domestic electricity tariff! I'm keeping an open mind but at the moment I'm not seeing any need to shell out £1,000 or so for a wall box.

As I said above, I got back from Yorkshire at about 6.45 this evening on 19% charge, dropped the car off at the village charger, walked home, had a cuppa and got the central heating woken up, then went back to fetch the car just before the overstay fine would kick in. The car was actually at 85% charge, more than I had expected. 66% of battery capacity in 55 minutes.

I unloaded my luggage and put the car in the garage and on to the granny charger. Granny estimates it will take until 00.18 to get right up to 100%, and from past experience I reckon there will be another half-hour or so of balance charging after that. Anyway, I'll be asleep, and the car will be 100% for whatever tomorrow brings.

I hardly ever bring the car back so low, usually I'm not so low that the granny charger can't get it up to 100% or at least close enough, before I need it again. I don't need the public charge-point very often.

However, if that public charger wasn't so close and so reasonably priced, my equation might come out different. (Although I do have a neighbour with a wall box who has offered me the use of it if I'm stuck.) The idea of having to drive even a mile or two and sit in the car for that 55 minutes doesn't appeal nearly so much, especially on a cold wet winter night.

 

[Chequers]

Depends how far away the public charger is. I'm sitting in my own house while the car is on the village charger five minutes walk away. I got home just before seven on 19% charge and since I want the car again tomorrow morning I just connected it to the charger on the way home and walked the rest.

I expect to get it to about 75% before I run out of time (maximum allowed is 55 minutes) and I'll top it up and let it balance charge on the granny charger overnight.

£1K buys a lot of electricity. And the village charge point is only 30p per unit. So it all depends on how you're placed.

In all due respect the village charge point is not your own personal charge point, it's there just as much for the folks travelling through your village as it is for you.
Same as the guy in an earlier post debating weather it was worth installing a charger at home as he has access to a charger close by at a supermarket, those chargers are for customers.
If you can afford a £26000 upwards EV then decency says you can afford a home charger.

 

[Rolfe]

The village charge point is there for everyone, including me. It has a 45-minute maximum stay period (no return for 90 minutes) to prevent anyone hogging the thing. It's not that heavily used in fact. And maybe you didn't read the bit where I said that since the granny charger can keep up with my usage most of the time, I don't use the village charge point very often? It doesn't occur to you that someone who is retired and on a fixed income might only have managed to buy a new EV because the MG4 is so very attractively priced, and might struggle - at least at first - to find another £1,000 for a wall box?

There is a guy with a Tesla who lives in a mid-terraced house less than 100 yards from that charge point. He doesn't have any opportunity to charge at home at all, and I suspect he relies 100% on the thing. I've seen him on the charger once or twice, but he's not hogging it either.

Anyone passing through the village is welcome to use the charge point, of course. I (and the Tesla guy, and other EV owners who live nearby) have the great advantage that we can nip out at a quiet period and get our 45 (or indeed 55 with the grace period) minutes without inconveniencing anyone else at all.

The first time I tried to charge on the CSS connector there the app said the charger was free. But by the time I put on my shoes and got into the car, someone in a Leaf had snuck in in front of me. So I went back home, waited till the app showed the charger was clear again, and went back and charged. You think I should have stayed away just in case someone "passing through" might have come along? What about the Leaf driver? If she was another local putting her car on the charger instead of buying a wall box, should she be castigated?

Maybe the day will come that this charger is so heavily used they'll put in a second one. But at the moment it's sitting there idle for the vast majority of every day. Come and visit and fill your boots. 30p per KWh.

 

[Torryhun]

In all due respect the village charge point is not your own personal charge point, it's there just as much for the folks travelling through your village as it is for you.
Same as the guy in an earlier post debating weather it was worth installing a charger at home as he has access to a charger close by at a supermarket, those chargers are for customers.
If you can afford a £26000 upwards EV then decency says you can afford a home charger.

The clue is in the name, it's a "public charger " there for any member of the public to use,be that local or passers-by.

 

[Macadoodle]

The often quoted £1000 cost for a home charger seems a bit spendy to me, you should be able to reduce that IMO.
I recently managed to buy a boxed brand new 7kW charger from ebay for £150, a fellow had got it included in a Fiat 500 deal but had never installed it.
Ok, my garage is already wired with a suitable cable and breaker so it was just a matter of fitting it, but still, there are definitely ways and means of doing it for a far more palatable price.

 

[Torryhun]

Yes, and this is important. If local people dominate the public charger because they won't install their own home charger then those travelling through can never use it.

Whether someone is on a fixed income or not, if you can afford a £26,000 brand new car, quibbling about another thousand for a charger doesn't make sense to me. Yes, it makes it more expensive but if you can't afford it, you probably can't afford the car in the first place.

I just don't get this thinking - it is like those that hypermile behind lorries at 50mph to eke out more range or in ICE world people with expensive cars that drive around for hours to find the cheapest pump prices - it feels to me like a false economy and a strange thing to focus on given the huge amount of money plonked on the car.

I am not attacking anyone here - just voicing my confusion when this comes up, I respect everyone's right to make their own choices.

The real problem is not who is using the charger, but rather the lack of a decent charging network.

 

[Rolfe]

Actually, there isn't any problem with that charger at all. It's lying there idle for most of the time, just waiting for someone - anyone - to make use of it. (Checks ZapMaps - yes indeed, it's free right now.) If I actually see someone using it when I pass I'm mildly surprised. I suspect most of the people using it are either locals, or people visiting locally. I spoke to one man who was using it who had come from Denmark and was returning to Denmark, staying locally in the village. A couple came from Northumberland to our church one Sunday for a special event, and charged their car during the service. A couple of people who live nearby have houses where they simply can't install wall boxes and rely on it completely for their charging, and they're not on it all the time (or complaining about not being able to access it) either.

The issue that the visitors spoke about was the time limit on charging, meaning that in one case he had to visit twice to get his big battery filled up to start the return journey (you only get 45-55 minutes, and no return for another 90 minutes), and in the other that they had to sneak out of church to get the car off the charger, or risk a fine. In neither instance was anyone else waiting to go on it, nor had they had to wait to get on it in the first place.

This is a ridiculous conversation. People manage their finances in different ways. In my case I had an urgent need to replace my car, when I wasn't planning on doing that until next year, but a BMW came out of a side road in Glasgow and wrote off my Golf. This happened to coincide with a £3,000+ bill for an unexpected central heating repair. The planned move to an electric car had to be done at a time when I wasn't entirely prepared for it. I'm currently juggling a credit card I had to max out to pay for the car before the insurance money for the Golf showed up, so as not to put too big a hole in my finite savings. The expense of a wall box, right now, is something I need like a hole in the head.

I might decide to put one in in six months or so, I don't know. It depends on whether it turns out that I need it or not. The granny charger is mostly coping with my needs, and having the 50KW charger five minutes away is the icing on the cake. Yes I could have managed without it yesterday, because the granny would have given me enough and to spare for today, I'm hardly going anywhere tomorrow, and I'd have caught up to full by Monday at the latest. But since the charger is there, and nobody else appeared to be going near it, why not?

If the charger gets busy, whether because of villagers or visitors, maybe the council will install a second one. Or maybe it will be enough of an annoyance for me to decide to find the money for a wall box. But right now this is a non-issue. We are actually entirely well served by this one charger, and nobody is complaining about it.

 

[Torryhun]

Actually, there isn't any problem with that charger at all. It's lying there idle for most of the time, just waiting for someone - anyone - to make use of it. (Checks ZapMaps - yes indeed, it's free right now.) If I actually see someone using it when I pass I'm mildly surprised. I suspect most of the people using it are either locals, or people visiting locally. I spoke to one man who was using it who had come from Denmark and was returning to Denmark, staying locally in the village. A couple came from Northumberland to our church one Sunday for a special event, and charged their car during the service. A couple of people who live nearby have houses where they simply can't install wall boxes and rely on it completely for their charging, and they're not on it all the time (or complaining about not being able to access it) either.

The issue that the visitors spoke about was the time limit on charging, meaning that in one case he had to visit twice to get his big battery filled up to start the return journey (you only get 45-55 minutes, and no return for another 90 minutes), and in the other that they had to sneak out of church to get the car off the charger, or risk a fine. In neither instance was anyone else waiting to go on it, nor had they had to wait to get on it in the first place.

This is a ridiculous conversation. People manage their finances in different ways. In my case I had an urgent need to replace my car, when I wasn't planning on doing that until next year, but a BMW came out of a side road in Glasgow and wrote off my Golf. This happened to coincide with a £3,000+ bill for an unexpected central heating repair. The planned move to an electric car had to be done at a time when I wasn't entirely prepared for it. I'm currently juggling a credit card I had to max out to pay for the car before the insurance money for the Golf showed up, so as not to put too big a hole in my finite savings. The expense of a wall box, right now, is something I need like a hole in the head.

I might decide to put one in in six months or so, I don't know. It depends on whether it turns out that I need it or not. The granny charger is mostly coping with my needs, and having the 50KW charger five minutes away is the icing on the cake. Yes I could have managed without it yesterday, because the granny would have given me enough and to spare for today, I'm hardly going anywhere tomorrow, and I'd have caught up to full by Monday at the latest. But since the charger is there, and nobody else appeared to be going near it, why not?

If the charger gets busy, whether because of villagers or visitors, maybe the council will install a second one. Or maybe it will be enough of an annoyance for me to decide to find the money for a wall box. But right now this is a non-issue. We are actually entirely well served by this one charger, and nobody is complaining about it.

I'm certainly not knocking anyone for using a public charger, I have a home charger, but still sometimes use the one a mile from my house that's in the car park of Aberdeen University because its cost free, Yea, I know typical Aberdonian

 

[KH11]

Deleted

 

[Cocijo]

In all due respect the village charge point is not your own personal charge point, it's there just as much for the folks travelling through your village as it is for you.
Same as the guy in an earlier post debating weather it was worth installing a charger at home as he has access to a charger close by at a supermarket, those chargers are for customers.
If you can afford a £26000 upwards EV then decency says you can afford a home charger.

These are just silly comments.
No one has mentioned that it’s a personal charge point for their use, so your comment on this is just wrong.
As is your comment about using close-by public chargers - what’s wrong with doing that? As you say they are for customers - derrr.
What’s ‘decency’ got to do with affording a home charger? It’s up to the individual how they spend their money - not you. There are many factors involved in making the decision - not just cost and affordability.

 

[Deleted member 10041]

I've no issue with this it's there to be used, it doesn't matter by who, they are all paying for it.
The only time things used to annoy me were people I know with home chargers using the Tesco ones when they were still free and then moaning about the fact Tesco were now charging.
The other thing are the tight arses, with two much time on their hands, who constantly plug and unplug the supermarket chargers to get the free 15 mins

 

[Cocijo]

I've no issue with this it's there to be used, it doesn't matter by who, they are all paying for it.
The only time things used to annoy me were people I know with home chargers using the Tesco ones when they were still free and then moaning about the fact Tesco were now charging.
The other thing are the tight arses, with two much time on their hands, who constantly plug and unplug the supermarket chargers to get the free 15 mins

Do people really do that for 15mins free charge? Wow - I know things are tight but that’s taking it to extremes.

 

[IanMK]

How much are you prepared to pay for the convenience? As @tsedge has mentioned, the car in itself is a significant outlay. Even if a pre-owned 7kW charger can be found, unless you can get 'mates rates', a qualified electrician is going to charge a sum for his expertise - they're not a no-profit enterprise, it's their living. In addition to the installation and testing, don't forget they have regulatory documentation to produce, too.
I had my charger installed yesterday. My first charge was 30% to 80% at a cost of £10.63 on a standard tariff. It took just over 5 hours (which I suspect included a short period of balancing on a low charge rate). It would have taken all day on my granny charger. I expect to charge mainly at home, only rarely using a public charger in which case it is likely to be a rapid charger and I would expect to pay twice the rate that I pay at home. Note the difference in VAT rates between home and public chargers.

 

[Deleted member 10041]

Do people really do that for 15mins free charge? Wow - I know things are tight but that’s taking it to extremes.

There have been people on this forum talking about doing it

 

[Rolfe]

Confession. I got my SR from 19% to 85% yesterday evening for £10.74, on the charger at the end of my road, in 55 minutes.

I mean, seriously, why wouldn't I? There was nobody else in sight. I should leave that and granny charge just in case someone might be passing through and want a charge? Locals, leave the village charger in case someone else comes along? Really?