the future of motoring is here in the form of the EV car but after you've selected the colour the
make and model your mind quickly drifts to what well you're going to be thinking where do i charge
it and how do i charge it to get over that range anxiety which is a barrier for a lot of people
when thinking about electric vehicles and that gives us quite a few options Gary doesn't it yeah
we could use the granny cable provided with the car which plugs into a 13 amp socket outlet but
the car behind us would take an incredible amount of time to charge you're right Gary it would that
that granny cable yes occasional use when you visit granny but if you were visiting granny
you're going to be there a long time this car's got a 75 kilowatt hour battery which on that
granny cable two kilowatt per hour charge means you're going to be there for nearly 36 hours so
let's hope that the cupboard is fully stocked and there's lots of tea available whilst we
like drinking tea here at efixx it's likely that the customer is going to choose a dedicated ev
charging point to charge their car yeah and in this video we're going to look at exactly the
things you should think about when choosing an ev charger so you can charge faster and safer
the journey to owning an ev charging point starts here where the meter is located and what we're
looking for in particular okay there's two things we're interested in here one is how much power is
available from this supply so the magic number in an ideal situation for is 100 amp written on
that fuse it may be lower which then brings in our second factor Gary and that's how much power do we
use in the house as it is you know do we have an induction hob do we have an electric shower that
makes a difference but is that the is that a big problem Gary no because it just means you have
to select the appropriate ev charger that will allow for load sharing throughout your property in
other words it can manage how much electricity is being used by the installation and how much the ev
car can take of the leftover power this incoming supply here is rated at 100 amps now if you have a
60 or 80 amp supply it may be possible to get that uprated to 100 amps which allows more capacity for
charging and other electrical appliances one thing to watch out for is the potential for
a looped supply so this means you've got a cable coming in here and a cable going out that goes to
your neighbour's house we've made a separate video about that but beware of that because that could
cause your EV installation journey to come to an abrupt halt or delay by a number of months can the
electrical system cope with adding another circuit to it in other words we're here at the consumer
unit or fuse box looking to see if there's a spare fuse way for this new circuit yeah luckily gary
there is in this one but that's only because we changed the entire consumer unit now that may come
as a surprise because this is quite a modern house but there wasn't a spare way and the electrical
system in here wouldn't cope with the requirements of an ev charger from safety and a performance
viewpoint so check out the video i've made about that to see why we went through this process
next thing to consider is the position of your ev charging point in relationship to where you'd
like to charge your vehicle yeah now that can be a bit of a trade-off between where it's easiest
to actually fit the charge point and get the cable to it and the places you could possibly
charge your car made quite easy in this property because there's two allocated parking spaces so
apart from running the cable out of an upstairs window at the front of the house this is the best
natural location to put the ev charge point another important consideration for your ev
charging point is obviously the lead when it's left behind that doesn't become a trip hazard
one important factor when choosing location of our ev charge point is how easy is it for the
charging lead to reach the charging inlet on the car now remember different cars have that
in different places so the car you buy today may be different from the car you have in three years
time or do you like to reverse in or do you like to drive in when you come home from work
when selecting your ev charger you'll be offered a tethered or untethered lead but what does that
mean well in simple terms is the lead permanently attached to the charger like this one that you've
got here gary or you have to provide your own lead that you plug into the charger but you'll have to
rescue that from the boot do you feel like doing that in the middle of a dark winter's night or
would you just have the convenience of taking the lead from the wall and plugging it straight into
your car there are some other things you may want to think about before choosing those options so
consideration needs to be for the length of this lead to make sure you can get to the appropriate
part of the car yeah or you may want to think the environment in which your charger lives this is
a public area here is the risk that the local children will want to place skipping ropes on
your ev charging lead with the tethered lead it's important that we wind it back onto our ev charger
after we've used it because there's always a chance gordon yeah someone could drive over it and
you won't have that risk with an untethered lead because you'll be unplugging the cable putting
it in the car and that stays with you all the time if you're possibly renting a property out that may
not be a risk that you want to take so you might want to go for the untethered option so the cable
is not your responsibility and if the cable does get damaged it's an electrician's job in
order to replace that cable i can see there that we've got a type 2 connector for our ev charging
is there any other types yes you used to be able to get a type 1 on older cars but now most cars
are coming with this type 2 connector but it's worth bearing in mind if you're in the market
for a used car that it may not have this type of connector and that will affect your choices when
it comes to your ev charge point we stated in the opening part of this video that if we were
to plug this ev car into a standard 13 amp socket outlet it it'll take up to 36 hours to charge it
so what's the advantage of using this ev charging point okay so this one behind us gary will charge
at seven kilowatts which is the maximum you can have on a uk residential supply single phase if
you want faster than that you're gonna have to go to three phase which is uh i'd suggest
a significant investment to get faster charging but with this 75 kilowatt hour battery this will
charge in just over 10 hours from empty to full that leads me nicely into cost no longer we're
gonna be on a four court filling up with petrol and diesel we're gonna see a significant increase
in our electricity bills yeah right gary obviously a significant amount of electricity goes in to
charge a car and then people become acutely aware of how much that costs them and that's again
where the charger comes in because this is a smart charger now what you can do with the smart charger
is leverage into some smart tariffs that are starting to emerge just for the ev market i will
put some links in the description to some that are dedicated for ev drivers but some of those
tariffs actually will pay you to charge your cars depending upon the time that you do it that seems
too good to be true well there's always somebody who has to take the take it away when you've been
given a gift and yeah the takeaway is if you try to charge your car peak hours when everybody else
is trying to cook the tea on the induction hob and take an electric shower you will pay a premium for
your energy so this is again where the charger can help in that process smart chargers can be
linked to your energy tariff and manage that process for you so you can either charge at the
optimum price point for you or make some decisions if you need to charge at the fastest possible rate
if like the property we're here at you've got solar panels we're thinking about getting solar
panels in the future it's important your ev charger is also compatible with them
you're right gary so this charger here can divert the excess energy generated by the solar panels
it's not being used within the property to charge the car now it gives us three ways of doing that
as quickly as possible supplementing what power is generated by the panels with some power from
the grid or just waiting for enough solar power to be generated and putting that in the car so we're
inside the car now why is it really important that when we're thinking about installing our EV
charging point that we think about connectivity to the internet yeah well this car Gary has
it's uh does over-the-air software update and it needs a reliable wi-fi connection to do that so
while you're installing your ev charge point you may also think is it in an area where i've got a
good wi-fi signal and that's something you know you're doing some wiring in the house you may
choose to improve along with the ev charger we're on the subject of future proofing what
consideration you would have to be thinking about when having a second say ev car yeah you're right
gary it's pretty easy to future-proof the car with a wi-fi update it's not so easy to future-proof
the electrical system unless you think about it when you take the first step install the first
ev charger now the systems on the market that will allow two ev chargers to share a supply
and then intelligently communicate between them so one car may charge first and then the second car
charges second or the systems can intelligently share the available power between the cars on the
network now that's something you may want to think about it's easy to upgrade the electrical system
if you're right next to the meter box at the front of the house but on this installation
we worked incredibly hard to get the cable all the way through the house and out to the charge
point it would be a shame not to think of that second car option when choosing our ev charging
point another consideration is the looks i think we've selected one here that blends in beautifully
with its surroundings yeah that's a personal choice and that's uh yeah yeah this one blends
in with a fence with the other colours that are seen in the house and the houses around it now
there's a vast array of chargers coming to the market some of them look
a little bit more agricultural than others some of them are absolutely tiny but just remember
not all chargers have all features so bear that in mind when you're choosing it is it all about the
looks is it about the app is it about the safety features is it about combining with solar power
you touched on safety features then this is a conversation you should have with your electrician
are those safety features built within the actual ev charger itself or are they going to need to
be housed somewhere else within the installation yeah you're right gary that can affect the complex
of the installation and hence the cost yeah is it another box by the consumer unit or is it a
slightly larger charger that has everything built in here again another choice to make have we just
proved that there's more considerations about the ev charging point than there was in selecting a
car in the first place you're right gary can make a massive difference to how much you pay to charge
your car and that cost of motoring if you'd like to see the steps that we went through to fit this
charger so all the way from the meter at the front of the house running the cable through
the house lifting the floors adding some other features all the way to this charge point check
out the video in the eye above my head or the description below as always we're interested
in your comments what sort of things do you need in an ev charging point what considerations did
you make when selecting an ev charging point or some of the things that we brought up in this
video things that you hadn't considered and will be considering them in the future when you're
selecting your own ev charging point we'll try and get back to as many of those comments as we can