Our environment is under threat and we should do everything we can to help the world. Our friends over at carwow are doing a lot to help promote sustainable, green automotive solutions for this! Electric Vehicles is one important way to do this!

We all like the thought of an electric car but we always are thinking where can we charge up?! Well the guys over at car wow have developed an interactive Electric Car Charging Map to help electric car owners find their nearest electric vehicle charging station!

Check out the interactive map, it’s pretty cool! By clicking here: https://www.carwow.co.uk/electric-cars/charging-points

It will tell you how many charging points there are at a location and how much it will cost! It may be easy to find one as there’s 20,000 charging points in the UK and it’s growing!

Does it cost to charge?

It varies and will depend on a manner of things such as your car, the batteries it takes and where you get your electricity from. Some public charge points ask for a monthly or yearly subscription, while others use a pay as you go model. While some are FREE! However a rule of thumb is, it will be cheaper to recharge the electric car than your petrol one.

How does it work?

There’s 3 different types, rapid, fast and slow charger. These are categorised by their power outputs. Thus, how fast they will charge your vehicle.

Rapid charger

This is the fastest way to charge your electric car. Rapid AC chargers have outputs of 43kW and a Type 2 connector. Rapid DC connectors have atleast a 50kW output. While Tesla Superchargers have a 120kW output and are Rapid DC. Using a rapid charger it should take between 30-80mins to charge to 80%

Fast charger

This is the type of charger you will see at most public places. These will be between 7 and 22kW. Fast Chargers will have Type 1 or 2 connectors and will take between 3 – 4 hours to charge.

Slow charger

These chargers have a three-pin plug. Similar to the home charger many electric vehicles owners have installed in their house, it can take up to 10 hours to fully recharge EVs at one of these locations. However, all the latest charging points in the UK have a universal Typ2 2 socket.

Type 1 / Type 2 Connectors

A lot of the UK sockets have the Type 2 socket. This has a flattened head and will charge at a faster rate than the Type 1. While both Type 1 and Type 2 cables are able to be fitted with adapters. This allows them to be connected to charging stations with either socket.

What is kWh for cars?

A kWh is the value which is equivalent to power in kilowatts multiplied by the time in hours, assuming the energy is transmitted at a constant rate.

So, therefore a kWh price is the EV equivalent of the price per litre of fuel. The price per kWh will show you how much it will cost to recharge the car at different stations.

To work out how much it will cost to charge your electric car from empty to full, you take the unit price for the electricity and multiply it by the kWh capacity of your car’s battery.

The price will always be a little less because the car will never go to completely empty and you may not have time to charge it full.

How many kWh does a car use?

This all dependes on things like weight and how they’re driven and different electric cars use different amounts of energy.

Also the size of the battery will be rated by how many kWhs it can hold. The Tesla Model 3 Long Range has a 7k kWh battery. So therefore it can store 75kWhs of electricity.

Electric vehicles do have an official range but as with fuel based cars, depends on external factors such as how you drive it. Driving it quickly like fuel based cars will use up the electricity faster and decrease the range.

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