Electric Vehicle Charging: Reasons To Get An Electric Car Charger Installed
Some may say that electric vehicles are slowly but surely taking over the roads. When in reality, this growth is happening at a rapid pace. In January 2022, 14,433 EVs were registered, representing 12.5% market share. By the summer this had increased to 22,737 for June, a 16.1% slice of the market. By December 2022, this had significantly increased to 42,284 new EV registrations – a massive 32.9% market share.
Throw this figure back to 2015 however, where just 1.1% of new vehicles registered were electric. With increasing consumer demand, greater availability of electric models and government support, electric car sales have been growing strongly in the UK and across Europe, as there are now over 660,000 battery-electric cars on UK roads, plus a further 445,000 plug-in hybrids. This is over 1 million vehicles in need of an electric car charger, with this number growing significantly and rapidly.
Other than the government’s mission to make the UK electric only on the roads from 2030 onwards, charging your EV with a charger is safer, faster and cheaper. The charger is smart and will control the flow of energy through the cable, meaning you will not be using more than is needed. Fast, because charging with a charger is about eight times faster than with just a cable. And last but not least affordable, because you can charge your car at off-peak times when you are not using the vehicle (home from work, walking the dog, whilst at work if you have a charger installed there…etc).
DID YOU KNOW: Charging your car with a smart charger is ten times faster than charging it with a simple cable!
Most chargers and public charging stations offer rates up to 22 kW while your domestic socket can only deliver rates up to 3.7 kW, while 2.3 kW is the maximum recommended. How fast you can charge your car at the end depends on the battery capacity of your car and the actual charging power of the model you purchase.
Using intelligent charging and using these charging points at specific times of the day, you can save money because you can charge your car when electricity rates are low. Companies try to even out the peaks when many people consume electricity like when they come home from work in the evening. Therefore, electricity is often cheaper late at night or early in the morning, so those will be the times when you can save money. This is because these are typical off-peak hours when not so many people are using electricity.
By reducing your carbon footprint by using an electric car charging point, although the upfront cost of an electric vehicle is often higher, EVs are cheaper to run, due to the lower cost of electricity compared to petrol or diesel. Recharging at home (overnight) will normally result in the greatest cost savings.
If you have a driveway or garage or have a designated space for your car that only you can use, the cheapest and most convenient way is to install a dedicated charging point for your vehicle. The Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV)’s EV chargepoint grant, is available to owners/occupiers of flats and renters of residential property with off-street parking. Landlords can apply for the EV chargepoint grant for landlords. Both of these cover up to 75% of the costs of installing a home chargepoint, up to a limit of £350. Also available for private or social landlords is the EV infrastructure grant for residential car parks that can help fund the installation of cabling for EV chargepoints.
Here at MeKo, we have all the relevant information and experience you need to get your EV car charging point installed ASAP. So if you are looking to take one step into a more carbon-neutral and greener future, then make sure you contact us today if you have any questions. Or be sure to check out our designated EV car charging page, where you can read about all of our models that we install for our variety of customers.