Where should electric cars be charged?
Many first-time electric car drivers or potential car buyers who have not yet bought a car are most worried about charging. After all, electric cars are like our mobile phones. When the power is used up, they become a decoration. The following are the most common charging places for electric car owners:
Home
According to a British report on electric car use, 78% of electric car owners often charge at home. 20.5% of car owners will park their cars at the company and often use the company's charging station to charge, and only 1.5% will often drive around and charge at irregular locations.
This is not surprising, because no matter which country you are in, the cost of charging at home is always the lowest, especially many countries have preferential policies for charging during off-peak hours (00:00-7:00 am).
Plug in the electric car charger when you get home, and then you can drive a fully charged car to work the next day. It is very simple and convenient. The only thing you have to do is to choose a good quality electric car charger. Click here to choose a home electric vehicle charger.
Workplace
Some car owners consider parking their cars near their company or workplace because their workplace is very close to where they live. Some companies even provide free charging for their employees, which can save a lot of money for car owners.
In addition, charging at the workplace can also replenish the vehicle's power at any time, so that the vehicle is always fully charged.
Shopping malls or supermarkets that provide charging
Some shopping malls or supermarkets provide car owners with limited free or paid charging places. For example, Tesco provides customers with paid charging places.
Other large shopping malls will basically divide some areas in the underground parking lot to provide customers with paid charging functions.
Public electric vehicle charging piles
When you are traveling or on a business trip, if you want to charge your car, you need to drive the car to a nearby public electric vehicle charging pile or gas station to charge.
This type of electric vehicle charging pile provides paid charging, and generally requires you to register an account before using it.
If you don't know how far the public electric vehicle charging pile is from you, you can open Google Maps to find the nearest electric vehicle charging pile, and always pay attention to the power indicator on the electric vehicle to avoid the car being unable to drive normally to the charging area due to the long distance.
Why is the cost of my charging different every time?
Many novice drivers may have noticed that if you charge in different places, the charging standards are not the same, and even if you charge in the same place, there may be different costs, which troubles many novice drivers. In fact, this is not surprising, mainly due to the following reasons:
Idle-time charging
In order to balance the load of the power grid and improve the overall efficiency of the power system, many countries have idle-time charging policies. Idle-time charging is usually between 00:00 and 7:00 in the morning. Charging during this period is much cheaper than charging during normal hours. Therefore, even if charging in the same place, there will be different costs.
Different output power
Different charging piles have different output power. The lower the output power, the lower the price, but the corresponding time is longer. Therefore, when charging, we need to pay attention to the charging power displayed on the car machine or charging equipment.
Different charging locations
Even if the output power is the same, the cost of charging electric vehicles in different locations will be different. Because different places will be affected by factors such as construction costs and operating costs, which in turn affect their charging costs.
How to charge electric vehicles at home?
Above, we have introduced the charging places and charging costs that novice drivers are most concerned about. Now let's talk about "how to charge electric vehicles at home", which is one of the first problems encountered by many novice drivers.
The main ways of home charging are: using a dedicated home charger and not using a dedicated home charger. Let's discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the two methods in detail.
Charging without a dedicated home electric vehicle charger
This is the lowest cost charging method. We only need to plug the cable that comes with the car into the adapter socket. This is a slow charging method, usually charging the battery continuously at a power of 2.3kw, so even a 22kw EV battery will take about 9 hours to charge to 80%.
This charging method is not only slow, but also does not have good power overload protection, so there are certain safety hazards for both cars and houses. If you need to charge your electric car at home frequently, then a dedicated home electric car charger comes in handy.
Charging with a dedicated home electric vehicle charger
This is a specially designed professional home electric vehicle charger that has many functions that ordinary sockets do not have. For example, it automatically adjusts the current when overheating and overload, and automatically cuts off the power when full. And its output power is much higher than that of non-dedicated chargers. You usually only need 3-7 hours to fully charge the electric car battery.
When you buy a dedicated home electric car charger from an EV charger manufacturer, how do you use it? Although different electric car chargers are different, the general method is the same. It mainly has the following steps:
- Take out the charging cable. The first step is to take out the charging cable in the charger.
- Unlock the car and plug it in. Many electric vehicles have charging port protection, so you need to unlock the car before plugging one end of the cable into the electric vehicle's charging port. The charging port is usually located at the rear of the car or on the front or back.
- Start charging. Now many electric vehicle charging piles will require identification before starting charging. Therefore, you can observe whether the electric vehicle is charging normally. If not, you need to re-identify your identity to activate the charging pile.
- End charging. Charging piles usually have the function of automatically ending charging after full charging, so we don’t need to worry about forgetting to unplug the plug after full charging. Since electric vehicle chargers all have a locking function, when we want to unplug the charger plug, we need to unlock it first, and then we can successfully unplug the plug and put it back into the charging pile.
