EV Charging 101

Following Jonny’s electric vehicle charging article, here’s everything you need to know about charging an EV in Europe – from someone who’s driven one since 2019!

You’ve Bought Your First EV 🔌🔋⚡🚗

Fiat 500e Convertable
The convertible Fiat 500e

First of all, fantastic work, you’re awesome!

Thanks for making a great decision and welcome to the future!

So charging, that’s something you need to do now… no more dinosaur juice for you, you’re EV all the way!

🛢️🦕⛽💥

⬇️

☀️💨🔋⚡

But how do you charge?

Types of Charging

Charging is really a lot simpler than you’d think, there are just two types:

  1. AC – Slow and Fast charging
  2. DC – Rapid charging

AC Charging

Slow Chargers

A slow charger uses AC power. Alternating current (AC) is what comes out of your plug socket at home.

In fact, plugging your car into a Schuko/3-pin plug, is an example of slow charging.

The charging lead (often called a granny charger, because of how slowly it charges) plugs into your home socket at one end and your car at the other. Some chargers and cars enable you to select how many amps to pull. A Tesla can pull between 5 amps and 10 amps from a domestic socket. You might want to vary the amperage if your house has poor electrics, or if you’re trying to use what your solar is generating.

Hyundai Kona Electric Charging
Hyundai Kona Electric

So how much charge can a home plug socket provide?

10 amps x 230 volts = 2.3 kW (kilowatt)

The Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus has a 50 kWh battery pack, so on a 3-pin plug in the UK, you can charge half the battery (or 25 kWh) in 11 hours. That’s over 100 miles topped up on cheap, renewable electricity while you sleep.

Fast Chargers

Fast charging also uses AC power. If you get an EV chargepoint installed at home, it is likely to be a 7.4kW fast charger.

This would enable you to completely “fill” a Model 3 from empty to full in a little under 7 hours.

Fast charging speeds are limited by the cars onboard charger. This converts the AC power into DC power, to feed into the car’s battery.

Charging by AC and DC

Some BEVs (battery electric vehicles) have powerful onboard chargers, like the Renault Zoe, which can charge at up to 22kWh. The Model 3 has a 11kW onboard charger. Some cars are limited to slower speeds, like the VW e-Up! limited to 7.2kW AC charging.

Many supermarkets and retail parks have fast chargers onsite – which are often free! Spending 60 minutes in the supermarket can give you ~40 miles of charge.

DC Charging

Rapid and Ultra-Rapid Chargers

Rapid (and Ultra-Rapid) charging uses DC power. This means the power can be fed straight into the battery.

Rapid chargers can charge from speeds of 43kWh, to speeds upwards of 350kWh!

If you’re on a long road trip, you’d use a rapid charger to top-up the battery at super speed!

The Tesla Supercharger network is an example of an ultra-rapid charging network. Many Supercharger stalls now have 250kW chargers! A Long Range Model 3 can charge at up to 250kWh, which is over 1,000 miles an hour!

Using the Supercharger network, you can top-up 200 miles of range in 15 minutes. That’s 3 hours of motorway driving in the time it takes you to visit the toilet and get a cupa tea.

Rapid chargers tend to be more expensive than Slow and Fast chargers, but they can deliver power at much faster speeds.

Rapid chargers are sometimes supported by battery storage, to ensure consistent supply and the cleanest possible energy. Here’s a video of the GridServe charging hub from the awesome team at Fully Charged.

Charging Plugs

European charging connectors are also really simple now.

European AC connectors for Slow and Fast charging are:

  1. Type 2 (AKA mennekes)
  2. Type 1

European DC connectors for Rapid charging are:

  1. CCS (AKA Combo 2)
  2. CHAdeMO

CCS and Type 2 use the same plug design – CCS is basically a Type 2 plug with an extra two pins.

A CCS plug (left) and a Type 2 plug (right)

Both have been the standard socket in Europe for some time now, with CHAdeMO and Type 1 slowly being phased out.

Some charging posts have more than one type of connector – using the right one for your car will ensure you get the best speed! For example, using a Type 2 charging lead will charge much slower than a CCS lead – if your car has both sockets.

Many charging units can charge more than one car at a time, but not all, so it’s worth checking beforehand.

Generally speaking, Slow and Fast chargers (away from home) don’t come with a charging cable – you plug your own in. Rapid chargers however always come with a cable – be that CCS or CHAdeMO.

Finding a Charger

The UK has more charging stations than petrol stations, so it’s not difficult to find a charger. To help you out (in the UK) Zap-Map have a fantastic live, interactive map! PlugShare is a similar map, which covers most of the world!

How many chargers are there within 10 miles of your home?

I bet it’s more than you thought!

Testing a petrol car in the electric future

It’s likely that by 2050, there will be virtually no ICE cars on the road in most of the world.

Let’s test drive a petrol car as someone who’s grown up only knowing electric cars. Here’s their first-hand account.

“I can buy everything online these days, so was rather confused why I needed to visit a showroom. I’m always up for trying something new though, so that didn’t put me off.

We were greeted by a very pushy salesperson who wanted to know everything about me – it felt quite invasive actually!

So we got in the car, did up our seat belts and I pushed the accelerator pedal.

Nothing happened.

I tried again, but still nothing.

The salesperson then handed me a key and said I’d need to use it to turn the ignition on.

Combustion engine fire

I jokingly replied: “What are we going to ignite?” 🔥

To my surprise they didn’t find it at all funny and proceeded to explain how there was an internal combustion engine under the bonnet in front of us (meaning no front storage space) which was connected to a tank, full of many litres of fossil fuel – from under the sea no less!

Apparently the engine sucks in the fossil fuels, and then uses controlled explosions to fire pistons which generate movement that is transmitted via a driveshaft connected to an axel that turns the wheels.

It all sounded extremely complicated with hundreds of moving parts, making me worried about how many things could go wrong.

When I asked, they explained that there was a servicing plan to deal with all that. “They ensure the spark plugs are replaced, fuel lines inspected, oil topped up etc. etc.” All for the tidy sum of £20 a month apparently – that’s what I pay for a month’s electricity for my current car! 💷💰

So I turned the ignition on and the whole car shook and juddered! It was as though we were going to take off, but the salesperson assured me we couldn’t, and that the car wasn’t capable of flying into space! 🚀

(as a side-note, apparently it can’t even drive in space, as it needs oxygen in order for the controlled explosions to take place – plus the Mars colony hasn’t found any fossil fuels yet, so there’d be no way to power the car 🙁)

To get it to move I had to use this extra pedal he called the clutch.

Clutch pedal

It wasn’t easy and apparently most people take several hours before they can operate it smoothly.

The car started to smell – which was apparently the clutch burning, really nasty stuff! That’s not covered by the servicing plan either!

Anyway, I eventually got the hang of it, and we got going. Thank goodness I don’t need to do that again!

The more I pushed the accelerator, the louder the car got. I didn’t mind the noise as we accelerated, but it definitely wasn’t to my partner’s taste.

It took a looong time to get to 20mph, and when we did the engine sounded like it was going to explode!

The salesperson told me that I’d need to change gear in order to go any faster – like on a pedal-bicycle! That meant more of the clutch, which wasn’t fun! At one point the salesperson told me we had kangeroo juice, whatever that means!

So we got to 60mph and the car was still making a very loud humming sound, it made it difficult to hear each other and listen to music. By this point, my patience had worn thin with the noises too. I didn’t mind it while accelerating – that could even be quite exciting – but ALL THE TIME? No thanks! So I asked the salesperson to turn it off. 🔊

Apparently that’s a necessary by-product of the internal combustion engine that can’t be switched off!

We were approaching some traffic lights, so I thought I’d ask about the 1-pedal driving.

The salesperson looked confused and then explained that when in gear the car would have engine braking. This sounded very exciting! 🚦

I thought I’d play it safe the first time and ease off when I normally would with regen braking.

I soon discovered that engine braking is really rather rubbish! Apparently it doesn’t put any of the energy back into the fuel tank either! Mad right?

I had to slam on the emergency foot break in order to stop us colliding with the car in front! 🛑

It’s safe to say I don’t rate so-called engine “braking”.

While waiting at the lights, the car continued to make an awful racket and gently vibrated as though we were driving down a gravel path!

I asked, and apparently there was a button I could press to turn on “start-stop technology”. I tried this and at the next lights the engine finally fell silent. Peace in our time! Apparently, it’s only economical if you’re going to be stopped for more than 10 seconds – otherwise the engine uses more fuel to start than it does to idle. Plus it causes wear to the starter motor constantly turning the engine on and off – which you guessed it, isn’t covered by the service plan either.

As we talked, I leant that one of the key benefits of a petrol car was that it can be fuelled to full in 5 minutes! ⛽

The downside is the fuel has to be mined from under the sea and you can only collect it from specialist stations. This means you can never fill-up at home, at work or at the shops, and you need to go out of your way to re-fuel. If you run out of fuel you can’t use a standard wall-plug at home or at a friend’s house, you have to transport fuel to the car. Madness! 🔌

Refuelling was an interesting experience. First when I got out of the car it didn’t automatically stop and I noticed smelly fumes coming out of the back of the car. I hate to think what they were doing to my lungs – and the planet when they disperse.

Fossil fuel extraction

Interestingly the pump nozzle felt similar to plugging in my electric car, although there was this dreadful smell as the liquid poured out and into the car. Apparently it’s highly flammable and caution must be taken to avoid an (uncontrolled) explosion! The salesperson wasn’t keen to talk about the implications of this in an accident. Kaboom! 😬💥

The cost of filling up was eye-watering. We did some maths and 1,000 miles in our electric car costs around £12.50 if filled at home from our low-cost renewable energy tariff, or £60 if filling up at a rapid charger on the road. The same 1,000 miles would cost me £125 in this car – and there is no free filling up at work, supermarkets, tourist attractions… anywhere! 🛢

Apparently, this is partly due to the scarcity of the resource and the cost of extracting, refining and transporting it, but also partly because the engine is far less efficient than an electric motor. We converted our kWh per mile into miles per gallon and it worked out around 120 in winter and 160 in summer. This petrol car could only manage 50 miles per gallon in optimal conditions!

Overall, the ride quality was not great, I really missed the smoothness of our electric car and the smells and sounds were all quite unpleasant. The lack of space in the cabin was a shame – my partner in the back had to contend with a mound in the floor that was where the exhaust pipe ran down the car to funnel the fumes out of the back. There also wasn’t any space under the front bonnet for bags, and rear boot space was limited too – the engine, piping, coolant, filters, fuel tank, oil reservoir, spark plugs, alternator and other things took up all the room. Our electric car has a single motor the size of a water melon and a structural battery pack running the length of the floor.

While the car was cheaper to buy, it doesn’t offer nearly the same enjoyable driving experience, plus our maths showed it was around £2,000 more expensive each year to run!

The environmental impact also didn’t bear thinking about. 🌍

I tried to like it, but it just wasn’t for me. I’m sticking with electric thanks.”

We often fear change more than our ineffective habits.

How many opportunities have you missed by being scared of change?

“The human condition fears change more than familiar behaviours which are disadvantageous”

James Moore

This article was inspired by: Test drive of a petrol car

How do self-charging cars work?

Toyota, Lexus and Kia use self-charging as a term to describe their hybrids.

Mild hybrid doesn’t sound as exciting or technologically advanced as a self-charging car, which is probably why they market them as that!

How Do Self-Charging Cars Work?

A self-charging hybrid has a small battery and an electric motor. When the vehicle brakes, the initial phase of braking is used to charge the battery. Brakes (disks and pads) then kick-in after.

This is a basic form of regenerative braking (or regen) something plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) and electric vehicles (BEVs) do too, but to a greater degree and effectiveness.

The small amount of energy recovered from braking is then able to be used to drive a limited distance. The battery can only run for around a mile before it needs recharging.

What Powers a Self-Charging Hybrid?

Exhaust pipe emissions on a self-charging car

Unfortunately, a self-powered car breaks the laws of physics, as the energy must come from somewhere. In one of Kia/Lexus/Toyota’s hybrids, the power comes from burning fossil fuels – the petrol in the internal combustion engine.

This means self-charging cars are 100% powered by petrol. All the propulsion achieved is down to petrol – since the cars don’t plug-in.

If we refer to hybrids as self-charging, we should really refer to all petrol and diesel cars as self-charging, since these cars don’t need plugging in to charge their 12-volt battery which powers the wipers, headlights and other electrical ancillery services.

How Far Can A Self-Charging Car Travel?

Toyota et al claim that their mild hybrids can be driven over 50% of the time on “pure electricity”. That makes them seem awfully green, given we tend to associate electricity with being green and petrol with being polluting. This claim is misleading for two reasons:

  1. All the electricity used to driver is generated by burning petrol, so it certainly isn’t the clean energy you can get from the grid or solar on the roof of your house.
  2. It’s crucial to remember that Totota reference time not distance – if you drive in stop-start traffic, the engine might be off for a large proportion of the time as you’re stationary. Some of the slower speed driving may be achievable using the battery, but because the battery is very small, it will drain extremly quickly and require recharging – so the petrol engine turns on. In terms of distance driven, around 1-3% of the distance driven uses the battery. This translats to around 2 miles in 100 miles of driving.

Do Self-Charging Cars Exist?

Will we ever see a car that can power itself? In the Toyota sense of self-charging, no. It’s not possible to drive a hybrid without putting petrol in it.

Lightyear One

However, there are projects like Lightyear One, working to create cars that you may never need to plug-in! These are pure electric cars (not hybrids, so no fossil fuels) and can be charged by plugging-in, or from the solar panels built into the roof, bonnet and boot! ☀️⚡🔋🚗

Lightyear are aiming to be able to charge an impressive 12 kilometres (7 miles) from 1 hour of sunshine charging – using the solar panels on the roof! For those who drive short distances, or travel infrequently, that could mean you’d never need to plug-in!

More info on the Lightyear One in this Fully Charged video.

Should Self-Charging Be Banned?

In Norway (home of the EV, where over half of cars sold in 2020 were fully electric) they’ve banned adverts that reference “self-charging” believing the term is misleading.

I believe marketing a petrol car (100% powered by fossil fuels) as self-charging should be banned. It makes polluting cars that burn fossil fuels seem cleaner and if you don’t do your research, you might think you’re doing your bit to look after the environment when actually, nothing could be further from the truth.