Charging and best practices

[krishn]

So my next car is going to be either a hybrid of fully electric. I plan to buy within the next month or so. I do have a bit of a dilemma, long story short I'm providing support for a parent at the moment and so am living with them. I plan on buying a place and so I'm not so keen on spending £1k on a charger as I should be leaving within the year. I was thinking of fitting an external 3-pin socket as I think that's roughly about £100 and a lot more palatable. Especially as it's likely no-one in the family will use it once I leave.

With a 3-pin plug, I wouldn't have too much of an issue in a hybrid as I can charge at the end of the day. For a fully electric car, I'd need to keep charging everyday to have it topped up as realistically I won't be able to give it a full charge for 19+ hours. I just wanted to check if charging when battery is at 50/60% is ok? I imagine it's probably not recommended, I also wanted to check if using a 3-pin plug generally was ok for hybrid or fully electric.

Thanks in advance

[gmaz]

krishn said:

So my next car is going to be either a hybrid of fully electric. I plan to buy within the next month or so. I do have a bit of a dilemma, long story short I'm providing support for a parent at the moment and so am living with them. I plan on buying a place and so I'm not so keen on spending £1k on a charger as I should be leaving within the year. I was thinking of fitting an external 3-pin socket as I think that's roughly about £100 and a lot more palatable. Especially as it's likely no-one in the family will use it once I leave.

With a 3-pin plug, I wouldn't have too much of an issue in a hybrid as I can charge at the end of the day. For a fully electric car, I'd need to keep charging everyday to have it topped up as realistically I won't be able to give it a full charge for 19+ hours. I just wanted to check if charging when battery is at 50/60% is ok? I imagine it's probably not recommended, I also wanted to check if using a 3-pin plug generally was ok for hybrid or fully electric.

Thanks in advance

Charging when 50/60% is absolutely fine, and this is what most EV owners do. You should avoid leaving the car at over 90% or under 10% for long periods (i.e. days). I usually charge up to 80% when it gets to about 50% unless I know I'm going on a long journey the next day, and then I'll charge to 100%

A 3-pin socket is OK as long as the wiring quality is good, and will provide about 2.2kW per hour or about 8 miles of range depending on the car.

[Tomo1971]

Maybe worth asking aorund the local area if there are any free chargers around still - there is the odd one here and there, generally 7kw granted but you could possibly use that once a week to get you up to 80% and every other night to top up as much as time allows.

Or, find the nearest and cheapest paid for one and use to do the bulk of the charging once every week or so.

[Paul Drawmer]

gmaz said:

Charging when 50/60% is absolutely fine, and this is what most EV owners do. You should avoid leaving the car at over 90% or under 10% for long periods (i.e. days). I usually charge up to 80% when it gets to about 50% unless I know I'm going on a long journey the next day, and then I'll charge to 100%

A 3-pin socket is OK as long as the wiring quality is good, and will provide about 2.2kW per hour or about 8 miles of range depending on the car.

It depends on the car and its battery management.

The BMW I3 can be charged to 100% every time and left at 100% without problem. In fact its cell balancing needs this.
I expect there are others that are OK with this.

[Smurfsarepeopletoo]

Every now and then when my charger throws a wobbler and doesnt charge the van, I go to morrisons, they are 75kw chargers, and van is usually full within about 45 mins, so you could just do that once a week while shopping, also a couple of the big chain pubs are installing 125kw charger in the car park, so treat yourself once a week.

[MrTrilby]

We charge our PHEV overnight every night using a 3-pin plug charger. It works just fine. It ended up costing us more than £100 for the external socket though as our earth leakage circuit breakers needed upgrading to cope with the EV charger.