FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Although having a home charger can be a more convenient way to charge your vehicle, there are other options.  With the average car spending just 4% of their time driven, the most efficient way to charge your vehicle is when you are parked up!  Whether this be ‘topping up’ during a visit to the supermarket or whilst you’re at work or ‘fully charging’ overnight using a public street charger or lamp post charger.  New public charging stations are being added all the time and you can always contact your local council or landlord to see if a charger can be installed on your street or in a communal parking area.

Charging time will depend upon the size of your battery, how much charge you currently have left and the type of charger you use.

• Rapid Chargers (43kW to 50kW) can usually charge to 80% in around 20-30 minutes
• Fast Chargers (7kW to 22kW) usually take a few hours to charge
• Slow Chargers (3kW) are best for overnight charging, and these can take between 6-12 hours.

It’s also worth noting that during cold weather charging times may take a little longer.

Manufacturers have already built-in safety features and precautions to ensure you cannot overcharge your electric vehicle.

Currently there are 28,952 public charging devices across the UK (Data from zap-map.com  21/01/2022), 5,213 of which are rapid or ultra-rapid chargers.  There are also many supermarkets with public charging installed and with additional options such as peer to peer charging (enabling you to utilise other EV drivers’ home or business charging points) there are plenty of options to charge during your journey.  The key is to plan your route and utilise those regular breaks to ‘top up’.

There are several factors that can affect range.  The use of air conditioning and/or heating and driving style can have an impact on range.  Refraining from aggressive acceleration, making good use of regenerative breaking and driving at a regular, steady speed can reduce the rate at which your battery’s charge drops.

Electric cars are generally very reliable as they have fewer moving parts than a petrol or diesel car to go wrong or wear out.

As with any petrol or diesel car, an electric car will need an MOT once it reaches three years old and every subsequent year.  Although there is no emissions test, all other areas of the car such as brakes, suspension, lights, steering components etc. all need to be checked and in working order. 

Yes, electric cars do need servicing.  However, as a fully electric car only has a few main components it costs much less to service in comparison to a conventional petrol or diesel car and they need less maintenance.