Driving

How will electric car owners pay the new mileage tax?

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In last week’s budget, a new electric vehicle mileage tax was announced. This will apply to all electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles from 2028, and will mean electric vehicle owners will initially pay 3p per mile, and plug-in hybrid owners will pay 1.5p per mile.

According to the BBC’s reporting, the mileage will be checked when the car has its annual MOT once it is three years old, or at other annual checks at the end of years one and two. The charge should then be combined with the annual Vehicle Excise Duty payments, which electric vehicle owners now have to pay as well as of the 1st April this year.

This method probably makes the most sense, but when the tax was first mooted earlier in the year, there were various theories about how it could be collected. I’m going to go through some methods, including the most likely one, to compare their feasibility.

Recording mileage at the MOT

All cars registered in the UK, once they are three years old (four years in Northern Ireland), have an annual MOT test (MOT just standard for Ministry of Transport) to ensure that they’re roadworthy, safe, and meet exhaust emissions requirements. The car’s mileage is also recorded at this point, and so it makes sense that this is used as the basis for calculating the mileage tax as it builds on something that already takes place. There presumably would need to be some backend IT changes at the DVLA to arrange for the tax to be charged to the vehicle’s registered keeper, but this method seems to make the most sense.

Where there is an issue, is that, as mentioned, cars don’t need to appear for the MOT until they’re three or four years old. I seem to remember that, historically, cars needed an annual MOT after one year, but I couldn’t find anything to back this up so it may be me mis-remembering. If I did remember correctly, then a re-introduction of an annual MOT would resolve this. However, very few cars need major repairs after a year of use, and there would likely need to be an expansion of garages offering MOT tests to cope with an increase in demand.

What seems to be proposed instead, is a simpler test to record the mileage. I guess there would need to be new legislation in place to make this mandatory, in the same way that it’s illegal to have a car on a public road without a valid MOT (unless you’re driving straight to a garage to a pre-booked MOT appointment). However, if it’s a simple case of reading the odometer, these could potentially be done at home and wouldn’t require a garage trip.

There may also need to be better enforcement of dodgy garages which alter odometers or pass vehicles which would otherwise fail an MOT.

Include the tax when charging

At the moment, owners of cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) pay fuel duty when they buy petrol or diesel from a petrol station. So you could argue that electric car drivers should pay the text when they recharge at a public charge point, as that’s the equivalent. Right?

As I write this, I haven’t used a public car charger in four months – the last time was on the way back from Little Moreton Hall in August. All my charging has been at home (or my parents home – thanks for the free electricity, Dad). So including it in the fees paid at public chargers wouldn’t work – especially as being able to charge at home is much cheaper and one of the major benefits of having an electric car.

Indeed, home charging provides something of a conundrum here – how do you work out what electricity is being used for charging a car, and then convert the kWh used to miles? Whilst we have a dedicated electric car charger, it’s just connected to our fuse box like any other high load device. From the perspective of our energy supplier, it would be hard to tell when we’re charging the car or using our electric shower, for example. We’re not on an EV tariff (because our smart meter still isn’t working) and, in any case, our charger isn’t one that’s directly supported on intelligent EV tariffs.

Even if our charger was modified to report its usage to the DVLA, if we wanted to we could just use a slower ‘granny charger’ to get around this.

The conversion from kWh to mileage will vary for different cars. For ours, 1 kWh of power is about enough for 4 miles, but we have a relatively small Nissan Leaf. Many EVs are bigger and heavier to increase their range, and so may need more power to move.

Modifying cars to send mileage data to the DVLA

Most electric cars have internet-connected systems probably that could be configured to send mileage data to the DVLA on a regular basis, via a software update. For those that can’t, there would need to be a hardware modification, which could be enforced at the car’s next MOT. However, I could see this being unpopular from a privacy perspective, and the car manufacturers may need an incentive to spend time and money on developing this.

The advantage would be that the data could be collected in real time, rather than annually.

Include it in self-assessment tax returns

Every year, around 4000 people file their self-assessment tax returns on Christmas Day, ahead of the deadline on the 31st January. I’ve never needed to do a self-assessment tax return, as my employer handles it through Pay-As-You-Earn.

As this is a tax, I suppose it could be added to the income tax system, but then that would make (potentially) millions more people like me have to do an additional tax return that we don’t have to do presently. This may also have to rely on self-reporting of car odometers and so would be open to abuse. Let’s not go there.

How much will the mileage tax affect me?

Right now, as we’re not on a dedicated EV charging tariff, we pay 23p per kWh to charge. That also assumes that we’re charging when it’s dark (no energy from our solar panels) and our home battery is empty; it can be much less than that on a really sunny summer’s day. As mentioned, each kWh gets us about 4 miles; with the new tax, we’ll additionally pay 12p to cover those 3 miles. That’s about a 50% increase. I reckon, based on an annual mileage of around 6000 miles, we’ll pay an additional £180 each year. The Treasury are keen to stress that this is half of what we would typically pay in fuel duty, however.

Whether this will be a lump sum, or payable monthly by direct debit, remains to be seen – I assume we would pay the previous year’s accumulated mileage tax in arrears the following year. There would also need to be some mechanism for ensuing a part year of mileage tax is settled when the car is sold to a new owner.

I agree for the need for EV owners to pay for upkeep of the roads. Maintaining roads costs money, and if the money to pay for this comes from fuel duty, then there needs to be a new income stream as more people switch to electric vehicles. After all, it won’t be possible to sell new ICE cars from 2030 – that’s only four years away now. And, as electric cars tend to be heavier than an equivalent ICE model, I also agree that EV owners should cover the increased damage to road surfaces that this will cause. Basing it on mileage makes sense, as those that drive the most pay the most. Perhaps I would have liked to see a variable tax, with smaller and lighter vehicles paying a lower rate, but I don’t know how feasible this would be.

Difference between level 1, 2 and 3 chargers

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A photo of my Nissan Leaf, with the car charging port open and a Type 2 cable plugged in.

This is one of those blog posts where I’d wondered something, looked it up, and am now sharing what I’ve found out. When it comes to charging your electric car, you may hear the terms ‘level 2’ or ‘level 3’ charger being used. They’re not common terms in the UK, but you may encounter them in other countries – especially the US.

Level 1 chargers

A level 1 charger is, essentially, just a standard 3 pin plug like you have at home. Your electric car will probably come with an adaptor cable, with a 3 pin plug on one end, and a Type 2 plug on the other end. There’s usually a chonky box on the cable, known as an EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment), that regulates the power flow. Colloquially, these are known as granny chargers.

In the UK, our standard power supply is 240 volts and 13 amps. Going back to GCSE Science, we know that power is the product of voltage and current (amps), so the maximum output is 3.1 kW. An electrician may be able to fit a waterproof external plug socket for you which is rated at 16 amps, upping the maximum power output to 3.8 kW. One of our neighbours had this done for charging their plug-in hybrid as it was cheaper than a dedicated car charger (level 2, as we’ll encounter in a bit).

In the US, the voltage is lower (typically 120 volts) but the current can be as high as 20 amps, depending on how it’s been wired. However, even a 20 amp socket in the US can only output a maximum of 2.4 kW due to the lower voltage.

A level 1 charger is therefore going to charge your car quite slowly – especially if you have a big battery. I have also seen photos of plug sockets that have melted due to continual use for charging electric cars. And it’s (probably) the least efficient; some tests suggest that 25% of the electricity doesn’t make it into your car’s battery and is lost as heat.

Level 2 chargers

Level 2 chargers are the dedicated electric car chargers that you can get fitted at home. In our case, we have a Rolec EVO unit, and this will be fitted to the outside of your house. In the UK, it’ll have a Type 2 connector, and will be capable of much higher current – up to 32 amps. That equates to (almost) 7.7 kW, which is the maximum that you can get on a single-phase electrical supply that is standard in UK homes.

My Rolec charger lets me vary the current, so I can set it below 10 amps if I’m not in a hurry and want to make the most of my solar panels. Level 2 chargers also incorporate EVSE inside them, so the cables just tend to have a standard type 2 plug on each end.

Many public chargers are also level 2 – especially older ones. Some may be connected to a three-phase electrical supply, which triples the power output to 22 kW. You’ll generally find these at places where you can park your car all day.

I personally describe level 2 chargers as ‘medium’ speed, but a full charge at 7 kW will take a long time for larger vehicles. For our Nissan Leaf, a full charge (from 0 to 100%) would take 6 hours and 30 minutes, although that’s partly because it can only accept 6.6 kW from level 1 or 2 chargers.

Level 3 chargers

Level 3 chargers are the rapid and ultra-rapid chargers that can output 40 kW or more – some can do up to 150 kW. Unlike level 1 and 2, these chargers use DC (Direct Current) rather than the standard AC (Alternating Current) that you would get from a standard 3-pin plug. They also use different plugs – CCS2 is the most common, but some cars, like our Nissan Leaf, use a competing standard called CHAdeMO. You’ll also find that these are almost always ‘tethered’ chargers that include their own cable, so you won’t need to plug your own cable in.

I doubt you would be able to get a level 3 charger installed at home, as they’re expensive and would probably need planning permission and authorisation from the electricity distribution network operator (DNO). But increasing numbers of these rapid chargers are available when out and about, and especially at places like motorway service stations where you need to charge quickly whilst en-route somewhere.

How fast your car will charge will again depend on its maximum charging speed. Our Nissan Leaf, when using CHAdeMO, can only accept up to 46 kW. Still, that means a full charge in less than an hour.

DC chargers are also more efficient, in that you’re less likely to lose power as heat than AC chargers. As these chargers are generally the ones you pay a premium for, that’s a good thing as almost all the electricity you pay for will make it into your car’s battery. However, regular use of rapid chargers can degrade the battery more quickly.

When you should (and shouldn’t) charge your electric car to 100%

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Something to bear in mind about electric cars is that their batteries will degrade slightly over time. As the batteries age, the maximum range obtainable from the batteries on a full charge will go down. How quickly this happens will depend on how you use and how you charge your car, and in this blog post, I’m going to talk about the impact of charging to 100% on your battery’s health.

In our previous diesel car, we would usually let the fuel tank run down until it was in the red zone (about 1/8 full) and then fill it up. The exceptions would be when we’re about to go on a long journey, and so we would fill up before departing to save having to stop off on the way.

With our electric car, we follow the advice of generally keeping the charge level between 20% and 80%. A quick web search finds several different articles backing this up. But we do also charge to 100% sometimes:

When you should charge to 100%

If you’re about to go on a journey where you need the range, then charging up to 100% makes sense. This is especially so if you’re charging at home, as this will be much cheaper than paying to do so at a public charger. There’s no point in only charging to 80%, if this would mean that you have to stop and charge on your journey, when a 100% charge would allow you to complete your journey without a break.

Occasional charges to 100% are probably not going to contribute significantly to your battery’s degradation.

When you shouldn’t charge to 100%

The batteries in your car tend to work best at between 20% and 80% charge. Going outside this range can stress the battery, and doing so regularly may result in them degrading faster. This is also why rapid public chargers slow down the rate of charge after your battery reaches 80%.

Therefore, if you’re not planning a long journey, then it’s best to stop charging your car at around 80%. It’s also worth noting that some cars will limit the effects of regenerative braking above 80% charge, so your driving will be less efficient until your battery drops below 80% charge. Route planning apps should estimate how much charge you will need for your journey, and whether it’s worth charging to 100%.

Also, if you’re using a public charger and don’t need a full charge, then it’s courteous to stop charging at 80% and move your car to a non-charging bay, so that someone else can use it.

Is battery degradation a big problem?

Battery degradation is something that owners of electric cars should be somewhat aware of, but I also think that it’s less of an issue than some make it out to be. We didn’t buy our Nissan Leaf new – it was three and a half years old, and with around 33,000 miles on the clock. Its battery capacity isn’t quite as much as it would have been fresh from the factory, but we’re talking about a reduction of maybe four miles, which is less than 2%. If you extrapolate that, then by the time the car is around 10 years old, the battery degradation may reach 5-6%. But that still means that the battery can hold almost as much charge as new.

Obviously, we’ll do what we can to try and preserve the battery’s capacity for as long as possible, although there will be the occasional 100% charge when necessary.

Regenerative braking in electric cars

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My Nissan Leaf dashboard showing that it has regenerated enough energy through regenerative braking to add three miles to the range

One of the benefits of most electric cars (and many hybrid cars) is regenerative braking – recovering the energy created from braking to charge the battery. It’s something that most petrol and diesel cars can’t do, and it allows electric cars to extend their range slightly.

Regenerative braking is something that electric trains have done for many years (indeed most electric passenger trains in the UK have regenerative braking), but it’s something that is probably new to car owners.

The first law of thermodynamics

If you’ve studied physics, you may be familiar with the first law of thermodynamics. This law dictates that energy can’t be destroyed and it can only be changed from one form to another. When you press the brake pedal to slow your car down, the energy from the brake force has to go somewhere.

On a internal combustion engine (ICE) car powered by petrol or diesel, your car will slow down by the friction created when your brake pads are pressed against your brake discs. The energy is therefore wasted as heat, and braking gradually wears your brake pads down over time.

Electric cars brake slightly differently. They still have brake discs and brake pads, but when you want to brake, the electric motor can work in reverse. The resultant kinetic energy can then be converted into electrical energy that is fed back into the battery, rather than being wasted as heat. From what I understand, this is done using magnets; if you think back to GCSE Science, you’ll remember that a magnet, combined with motion, produces electricity.

Additional range

That additional energy flowing back into the battery can therefore extend the range that your car can achieve on a full charge. We’ve actually noticed the charge level go up whilst driving downhill. An example is when we’re heading home from Manchester; to reach Sowerby Bridge, we exit the M62 at its summit point which is 372 metres above sea level, and descend around 300 metres. Typically, the charge goes up around 2% over the 8 miles from the M62 to Sowerby Bridge.

One thing to note is that your battery needs some capacity to accept the extra charge from regenerative braking. Therefore, if your car is 100% charged, there won’t be any regenerative charge. On our car, regenerative braking is limited above 80% charge.

Overall, depending on the types of roads, regenerative braking tends to add between 5 and 10% more range, which equates to between 7 and 14 miles. As well as allowing you to drive further on a full charge, it also saves a bit of money.

Reduced brake wear

Because you’re using the car’s electric motor to slow down, you should also find that your car’s brake pads and brake discs suffer less wear and tear. Again, this will save you money, as the discs and pads won’t need replacing as often as they would in an ICE car. It also reduces your car’s emissions; not only do electric cars not have any tailpipe emissions, but the particulate emissions from your brakes is also reduced compared to an equivalent ICE car.

How much regenerative braking your car will do, will depend on its mode. On our Nissan Leaf, in standard and eco driving modes, it will do a moderate amount of regenerative braking. But if we pop it into e-pedal mode, which is its one-pedal driving feature, the motor brakes more aggressively to regenerate more energy. We tend to keep it in e-pedal mode almost all of the time, although it’s of less use on motorways, for example.

Regenerative braking is a nice bonus feature of electric cars, and helps them be more efficient. It also adds to their lower maintenance costs, through lower brake wear. It’s certainly something to consider when weighing up whether to buy an electric or hybrid car.

Route planning apps for electric cars

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A screenshot showing various route planning apps, including Google Maps, Apple Maps, ZapMap, Electroverse, PlugShare and ABRP

Since I first got my own car (10 years ago), we’ve used Google Maps for directions. I’ve never bothered with a stand-alone satnav, and our Nissan Leaf is the first car that we’ve owned to have one built-in.

With our electric Nissan Leaf, Google Maps is still our go-to app for route planning and directions, but there are some other apps that I’ve considered. Here’s an overview of them.

Google Maps

Starting with Google Maps. Its support for electric vehicles is okay; you can tell it that your car is an electric vehicle, and it’ll offer the most energy-efficient routes as well as the fastest. Remember, electric and hybrid cars have regenerative braking; in a petrol or diesel car, a shorter but slower route may only use a little less fuel, but a lot less energy in an electric car. On one recent journey, a slower but more direct route took five minutes longer, but used 29% less charge and meant that would get there and back without having to recharge en route.

You can also tell Google Maps what plugs your car supports. Our Nissan Leaf, for example, can charge from a 3-pin plug, a Type 2 AC charger and CHAdeMO DC chargers. Then, when you switch your car from being petrol/diesel to electric, it’ll no longer offer to show you directions to petrol stations, but to public electric car chargers instead.

Google Maps will show public chargers from the majority of major operators, and their occupancy. However, compared to some of the other apps mentioned here, it won’t show all chargers.

If you have a really new electric car with Google Maps built-in, then it’ll know your car’s current charge and be able to add charging stops for long journeys. Our Nissan Leaf doesn’t – we can just use Google Maps through CarPlay or Android Auto. As such, it won’t automatically suggest charging stops on longer journeys.

Apple Maps

Note: I’m writing this about Apple Maps in iOS 18, which was current at the time of writing

I’m sure that Apple Maps works great, if you live in California. I don’t, and since Apple launched it 13 years ago in iOS 6, it’s been a disappointment. If you do live in California, or a supported country, then there are EV features available to you. But it appears that the UK either isn’t a supported country, or it just doesn’t work with my Nissan Leaf. Either way, for me, there are no special features available in Apple Maps.

I can’t even tell Apple Maps that I drive an electric vehicle, and so it still bubbles up petrol stations which are of limited use to me now. You can search for ‘charging point’ and get directions to charging points, but it can’t easily incorporate these into a route. It also recommended a charging point to me which didn’t actually exist.

ZapMap

ZapMap has probably the best list of UK electric car chargers. As well as listing all of those on the main charging networks, including availability, users can also add chargers themselves. These are often ‘destination chargers’ at places where you can visit, which may be offered for free and are not part of a larger network.

The app is ad-supported, and won’t work with CarPlay or Android Auto unless you pay for ZapMap Premium. This currently costs £5 per month, or £35 for a full year if paid in advance (£30 if you sign up before the end of the month). As well as hiding the ads, you get a free ZapMap RFID charging card (normally £10) and a 5% discount if you pay for certain public chargers through the ZapMap app. As I only use public chargers occasionally, I may consider the £5 per month option when needed, and then cancel.

The free app lets you plan a limited number of routes, which can then be sent to either Apple or Google Maps for navigation.

Octopus Electroverse

Electroverse is the public charging app from Octopus Energy. It doesn’t list as many chargers as ZapMap, as it focusses just on those on the major networks. However, it offers things like route planning, CarPlay and an RFID card for free, unlike ZapMap, and there are no adverts. It also looks nicer.

It’s worth noting that, by default, it’ll only show public chargers that are compatible with the Electroverse app and RFID card. This means that public chargers from Pod Point initially don’t appear, for example. You can turn this off if you want to prioritise seeing a wider range of chargers.

The route planning is quite good. You can tell it what car you drive, your start and end points, and how much charge you expect to start with. It’ll then calculate a route that includes stops at compatible chargers, and it’ll tell you how much you need to charge at each stop and how long it’ll take. You can then send the route to Google or Apple Maps. Note that in CarPlay mode, handoff is only to Apple Maps and not Google Maps, so bare that in mind.

PlugShare

PlugShare is another site that allows user contributions of public charger places. Unlike ZapMap, which is UK focussed, PlugShare is global. Its list of chargers is extensive, and even includes chargers which are ‘under construction’. I checked a couple of these locally, and found that, whilst there was planning permission in place for these, construction work hadn’t started. I think this is where Apple Maps may be getting its data from, but without the knowledge that they’re under construction.

It supports route planning, but this seems to be limited to showing public chargers on a given route. Unlike Electroverse, it didn’t tell me how much to charge up by and how long to stop for, and wouldn’t send the details to a mapping app. It supports CarPlay though.

ABRP – A Better Route Planner

A Better Route Planner is worth considering. It’s a full replacement for Apple Maps or Google Maps, and is designed for electric cars. Like with Electroverse, you can select your car and the starting charge, and it’ll plan routes to include car chargers.

CarPlay is limited to ABRP Premium, which also allows you to factor in weather conditions when driving, and to prefer chargers where there are toilets or children’s play areas. And, like Google Maps, ABRP Premium incorporates traffic data. It can also connect to live battery data in more cars, albeit in a somewhat roundabout way. For my Nissan Leaf, it needs an OBD2 adaptor and the Leaf Spy Pro app (£20) set up. ABRP Premium costs €5 per month, or €50 per year.

Combining the apps

At the moment, I’m using a combination of all three:

  • Google Maps for general navigation
  • Electroverse for calculating charge levels on a route, or incorporating charge points into a route plan
  • ZapMap for finding charger locations

It would be nice if Google Maps included charge levels in its route planner on cars that don’t have it built-in; that would minimise my need to use other apps. Still, by planning my routes in Electroverse and sending them to Google Maps, I can achieve most of the features of ABRP without their premium subscription. Once I’ve picked up an OBD2 adaptor that’s fully compatible with Leaf Spy, I may give ABRP another try though.

Higoom Cordless car air pump review

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A photo of the Higoom cordless car air pump

One thing that all cars have in common, regardless of the type of engine or number of wheels, is that they all use tyres. Tyres can lose their inflation over time; a deflated tyre creates more drag, meaning the engine has to work harder to counter the increased resistance. So, keeping your tyres properly inflated should improve your car’s fuel economy, or miles per kWh for electric vehicles.

Our previous car came with a portable car air pump, that also doubled up as a puncture repair kit. However, our new car doesn’t, and so I needed to buy a new pump to keep the tyres correctly inflated. Coincidentally, I started seeing social media adverts for cordless car air pumps, although ultimately I ended up buying this Higoom cordless car air pump from Amazon (sponsored link). At time of writing, it’s ‘Amazon’s choice’ and costs £25.

The Higoom car air pump in use inflating my car's tyres

Unlike my previous car air pump, this can be used without being plugged into your car’s 12V supply – although you can still plug it in if you want and a 12V car adaptor with a barrel plug is provided. Instead, there’s a hefty battery inside, which makes it a lot easier to use. It’s also a digital model, so you can set the target air pressure first and pump the tyres to this level, and then it’ll automatically stop. The standard tube also has a lever-top fixing, so you don’t need to screw it on to your tyre valves. It also comes with a variety of adaptors, for inflating other things like bike tyres and paddling pools.

The car air pump also doubles up as a power bank – there’s a USB-A output socket on top – and as a torch, with an LED light. The battery inside charges using a USB-C socket.

Whilst the size of the battery makes it quite hefty – almost a kilogram in weight – it’s still small enough to store in your car’s glove compartment. It also comes with a storage bag, which is big enough for the pump and all its accessories.

I’ve seen similar devices sell for double the price of this Higoom model, so at £25 it’s worth considering.

Some thoughts on the state of public electric car charging in 2025

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A photo of my Nissan Leaf, with the car charging port open and a Type 2 cable plugged in.

So we’re about a month into owning an electric car, and in that time we’ve taken it on two long distance trips – our holiday in Wales, and to the Midlands and Oxfordshire for a family birthday. As our Nissan Leaf only has a 150 mile range on a full charge, we were therefore reliant on public chargers to be able to continue our journeys. This post is therefore some collected thoughts on our experiences, in case you are thinking about switching to an electric car.

Availability of charging bays

Across the UK, there are almost 42,000 places you can charge an electric car, according to ZapMap, with each location offering an average of two chargers and three connectors. However, sometimes you would encounter a charger with two bays, for two cars – but the charging machine could only charge one car at a time. This was a particular problem with the faster ‘Rapid’ chargers. There were a couple of occasions where we arrived at a charger, and could plug in a cable, but would have to wait because another vehicle was already charging.

Other times, we would get there and all the chargers would have been taken. On the way back from Wales, we visited Chester Zoo, which I’ll blog about later in the summer. There are 26 charging bays available, but on a summer Saturday in August, all were taken by the time we arrived at 10:30am. Thankfully, I could check their availability on an app, and was able to move our car around when one had become free around lunchtime.

There is a degree of etiquette when it comes to charging a car. For example, if your car has finished charging, then, if you can, it’s best to go back to it and move it to a standard space to free it up for someone else to use. Also, don’t hog a rapid charger if there’s a slower charger available that you have the time to use.

So far, we’ve not encountered a charging bay being ‘iced’, as in occupied by a standard petrol or diesel car with an internal combustion engine (ICE).

Only slower chargers available

Many public chargers are 7 kW ‘medium’ speed chargers. A full charge on one of these would take about six hours for our Nissan Leaf, and likely much longer for those with much bigger batteries. These chargers are fine for ‘destination charging’ – for example, at Portmeirion, where we were intending to stay for the whole day anyway. But they’re no good for a quick charge to continue a journey.

This problem will get better in time as more rapid and ‘ultra-rapid’ DC chargers are installed.

CHAdeMO, or the lack thereof

Our Nissan Leaf can charge from three types of plug:

  • Standard 3 pin plugs at around 2 kW for a slow charge
  • Type 2 plugs at around 7 kW for a medium charge
  • CHAdeMO plugs, for a rapid charge of around 40 kW

CHAdeMO is a Japanese standard, and a number of Japanese cars of a similar age to our Nissan Leaf were built with these sockets and sold worldwide. But it’s not the European standard for fast charging, which is CCS2. CCS2 looks similar to the type 2 socket, but with an extra bit on, and it’s DC rather than AC. We can’t use CCS2 chargers without buying a converter, and they’re expensive – at least £600.

A lot of rapid chargers will just have one or two CHAdeMO plugs. A good example was Northampton services on the M1, where a bank of 12 rapid CCS2 chargers have been installed, but only one CHAdeMO charger. Which, predictably, was already occupied by another Nissan Leaf. Thankfully, we managed to find somewhere else to charge.

I get the point that barely any new electric vehicles are being built with CHAdeMO connectors, but for those of us with such cars, it can be a pain when they’re not available.

All the apps

Public car charging apps are a bit like car parking apps, in that you may well end up with several of them installed. Early on, many public chargers could only be used using an app – I remember talking to someone who was a very early electric vehicle adopter, who said that having all the apps was the worst thing about it. Thankfully, many public chargers offer contactless payments with a credit card, which is much easier. And some accept an RFID card, which you can order from several places that you then link to a payment method. We’ve got one from Octopus Energy, which works most of the time, but not always.

But some still require you to download an app, sign up for an account, link a payment method and then start charging. The worst of these, in my view, is Pod Point, where you also have to top-up a balance before you charge. That means estimating how much you’re going to need to pay before charging, and then having any money left over held in a Pod Point account. Unfortunately, Pod Point are one of the bigger operators, having partnered with Tesco.

The other issue with apps is phone reception. We managed in Wales, but had we not had a signal, there would have been some places where we wouldn’t have been able to use the chargers.

No chargers where you need them

I mentioned ‘destination charging’ above, giving good examples of Portmeirion and Chester Zoo that allow visitors to charge whilst they’re there. This is one of the key advantages of having an electric car, in that you can charge at somewhere you were planning to stop at anyway, rather than taking a detour to a petrol station.

But not all ‘destinations’ have charging. Whilst in the Midlands, we visited Cadbury World, which doesn’t yet allow its visitors to charge their cars. Which was a shame, although we did find a rapid public charger at an art-deco McDonald’s in King’s Norton.

Thankfully, it looks like more places are investing in charging infrastructure for their visitors. The National Trust, where possible, is installing chargers at many of its properties. And they’re potentially another income source for these attractions. Whilst some may offer free charging, as an incentive, most electric car drivers do expect to pay to charge. So whilst there is the upfront cost of installing electric car charging infrastructure, and then maintaining it, in the long run it could make a good return on investment.

Broken infrastructre

At home, our nearest rapid charger is a short walk away. But it’s been out of order for months, and we’ve seen a number of public chargers that were broken on our travels. This particular charger is in a local authority car park, and I understand that the council got funding to install it, but not maintain it. And last weekend, when we needed to use a rapid charger in Congleton in Cheshire, all of them across the whole town were faulty.

I wouldn’t say faulty chargers are a widespread problem, and most mapping tools for finding public chargers will indicate whether chargers are faulty if they have this data. That should reduce the risk of arriving at a charger with only a few watt-hours to spare, to find it’s out of order.

Charging at home is (almost) always cheaper

Electric cars make the most sense when you can charge them at home. Your home electric supply will (almost) always be cheaper than using a public charger. We’re on a fixed electricity tariff with Octopus, where we pay 20p per kWh. And that assumes that we’re charging overnight, without any contribution from our solar panels.

By contrast, even the cheapest public chargers are usually more than double that. Rapid chargers, especially those at motorway service stations, cost even more – typically 88p per kWh, so more than four times more expensive than charging at home. Part of the reason for this is that public chargers must charge you a higher rate of VAT. At home, your electicity bill has VAT at 5%, but public chargers have to charge 20% VAT.

If you need to use a public charger to top up your charge to get home, then it’s worth calculating how much you need to charge to get home. That way, you only need to charge your car by that much (plus maybe a bit extra) to get home, where the rest of the charge can be done more cheaply.

I say ‘almost’ always cheaper because you may get lucky, and find a free public charger. There aren’t many, but we came across two in Wales. Admittedly, one was a 3-pin plug, offering a very slow charge, and the other was a medium speed 7 kW charger. But still, it’s free electricity, and as we were away and reliant on public chargers, it was very welcome.

Hello to our new electric car

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A photo of a red Nissan Leaf

Well, our journey towards an electric car is complete, as on Friday, we bought a new (to us) Nissan Leaf. It’s a second generation model, built in 2021, and replaces our diesel Peugeot 3008. It’s also our second Nissan, having previously owned a Nissan Note from 2015 to 2019.

Both of our previous cars have been around 6 years old when we’ve bought them, whereas this Nissan Leaf is less than four years old. It’s the ‘n-Connecta’ trim, so a mid-range model with a similar level of features to our Peugeot. Our local dealership also had a cheaper model with the ‘Accenta’ trim level, but we decided to pay more for the additional features that we were used to with the Peugeot.

Driving the Nissan Leaf

Like almost all electric cars, the Nissan Leaf just has one gear, so it drives like an automatic. I’ve only ever driven cars with a manual transmission before, and so this took a little getting used to. In particular, one quirk of the Nissan Leaf is the parking brake (i.e. handbrake) is foot operated, roughly where the clutch would be on a manual car.

The car has three driving modes: standard, eco, and e-pedal. Standard is best for motorway driving, giving you better acceleration at the cost of higher power usage. Eco is fine for day-to-day driving, but turning on e-pedal enables single pedal driving. That means that you press the accelerator pedal to go, and take your foot completely off the pedal to slow to a stop. As it the car brakes, the energy generated is then recovered to the battery – known as regenerative braking. As well as meaning you only need to keep your foot on one pedal most of the time, it’s also the most energy efficient way of driving.

Compared to the Peugeot, the steering is much lighter, and even in Eco mode, it’s got good acceleration. But most electric cars will accelerate faster than an equivalent car with an internal combustion engine.

In common with the Nissan Note, the legroom isn’t great when driving, but Christine finds it more comfortable to drive than the Peugeot.

Energy use

We’ve only had the car a couple of days, and have used around 40% of its charge across around two and a half hours of driving. This equates to about 40 miles. The Lithium-Ion batteries in most electric cars are less efficient in really hot weather, like what we’re currently experiencing in the UK as I write this. Therefore, you should keep your EV below 80% charged in hot weather (if you can). Indeed, when I picked the car up on Friday, the dealership had charged it to this level.

The maximum stated range of the Nissan Leaf is around 150 miles. That’s quite a bit less than our Peugeot, which could do around 400 miles on a full tank. And, of course, a key disadvantage of electric cars is that even a quick charge takes longer than fuelling a car with petrol or diesel. We’ll have to plan our longer journeys with recharge stops, although most motorway service stations include several quick charge points now. That being said, a quick charge should mostly recharge our Nissan Leaf’s battery in about 40 minutes.

Size

We deliberately decided to buy a smaller car than our previous Peugeot 3008. There are a couple of occasions each year, when the Peugeot’s extra capacity would be helpful, like holidays. But for 95% of the time, we were driving around a car that was bigger than we needed it to be. That’s a waste of fuel, and also makes it more difficult to park in narrow space.

Compared to the Peugeot 2008, the Nissan Leaf is around 5 cm (two inches) narrower, so parking should be a little easier. It’s also shorter in height, by around 10 cm (four inches). However, weirdly, it is actually longer – by around 30 cm (6 inches). It doesn’t look like it should be longer, but it is.

As such, the actual amount of space inside the Nissan Leaf is only slightly less than in the Peugeot. And on the few occasions that we may need extra space, we’ll considering hiring a roof box, which will also be easier to reach with the lower roof.

Charging

So far, I’ve only charged the car at home, using our dedicated Rolec EVO car charger. The previous owner of our car had set it to charge on an overnight schedule, so by default, it won’t start charging as soon as it’s plugged in. However, there is a dashboard button to over-ride this to start an immediate charge. Three lights appear on the dashboard, visible from outside the car, to show how charged the battery is.

On a ‘slow’ 7 KW home charger, expect a full charge to take around 6 hours. At present, I’ve knocked the current down to 16 Amps, so a full charge would probably take closer to 14 hours at this rate. This is where the equation to calculate power, voltage and current that you learned for GCSE Science comes in.

The Nissan Leaf supports two charging sockets. There’s a standard ‘Type 2’ socket, which only supports ‘slow’ chargers up to 7 KW, like our Rolex EVO. Then there’s a second ‘CHAdeMO’ socket, for use with supported fast chargers. Type 2 is essentially the European standard, and some public charge points only offer type 2 sockets, even for fast charging. Therefore, if we need to use a fast charger, we’ll need to find one that offers a CHAdeMO socket. Many do, but not all.

All the extra fancy gubbins

Being nine years newer than our previous car, our Nissan Leaf has lots of additional features:

  • Adaptive cruise control. I used cruise control extensively on the Peugeot and so pleased to have it on here. Combined with no need for gear changes, I can drive for longer without using any of the pedals with this on. ‘Adaptive’ means that it will slow down to match the speed of the car in front if needed, which I didn’t have before.
  • Built-in Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Our Peugeot had the most basic entertainment system without a colour screen, so it’s nice to have these built-in. However, it only supports these over USB – if you want to use either CarPlay or Android Auto wirelessly, you need to buy a separate USB adaptor (sponsored link).
  • Heated seats and steering wheel. I suppose these will be useful in winter. Our nine-year-old seemed very keen on the idea of heated seats, until we pointed out that they still need to use a car seat until they’ve grown a bit more.
  • Remote start air conditioning and heating. Whilst the car is plugged in, you can use the Nissan app to remotely start the air conditioning or heating systems, so that your car is the right temperature before you set off. This also reduces the load on the battery.
  • Forward, rear and around view cameras. Our Nissan Note had no parking sensors whatsoever, whilst our Peugeot 3008 had standard rear parking sensors. The Nissan Leaf, meanwhile, offers a reversing camera, a forward camera, and ‘around view’ cameras. The around view gives you a top-down, ‘bird’s eye’ view of your car whilst reversing. This makes it much easier to park straight, especially if there are no white lines marking out the space. There’s also moving object detection.
  • Blind spot alerts. A small red light flashes on your wing mirror, along with an audible warning, if there’s something in your blind spot.

There’s a higher level of trim called ‘Tekna’ which adds a self-parking feature. That would have been lovely to have, but as we were buying used, we were limited to what was available at the dealership.

Compared to the Peugeot, the only things that I’m missing so far are:

  • The large storage box between the front seats (the Nissan Leaf has a smaller one)
  • The head up display, which showed the current speed and whether cruise control or the speed limiter was enabled.

The Nissan Connect app

The Nissan Connect mobile app allows you to control aspects of your car remotely, like checking its charge status or starting the heating or air conditioning. Alas, although I’ve downloaded the app, I can’t use it yet. The previous owner of my Nissan Leaf didn’t unlink the car from their account, and so I’m waiting for someone at Nissan to un-link it. Thankfully, the dealership gave me a copy of the DVLA ownership change confirmation and so hopefully that’ll be enough evidence.

Overall, we’re really happy with the Nissan Leaf. It’s easier to drive, easier to park, and should be much cheaper to run. I suppose it’s major test will be when we need to drive longer distances – like when we go on holiday next week.

Farewell to our old car

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A photo of a black Peugeot 3008.

By the time you read this, we’ll have got ridden of our previous car, a black Peugeot 3008, after six years. We’ll have picked up our new electric car and I’ll write about that in future blog posts.

The Peugeot 3008 was our second car, and we bought it in 2019. It was not a planned purchase, but was necessitated by our previous car being written off in France. That car was a Nissan Note, bought in 2015 shortly after I passed my driving test. We were therefore limited by what we could get locally, and at short notice.

Trim and spec

As it was, the Peugeot 3008 has served us well. When we bought it, it was six years old and had clocked up around 80,000 miles in that time, which probably meant that it was cheaper than it would’ve been with a lower mileage. We didn’t expect to be able to buy such a large car within our price range.

In terms of trim, it was an ‘Allure’ model, which meant that it had some additional features. These included a transparent head up display showing your current speed, cruise control with distance alerts and dual zone climate control. However, it also had the most basic stereo system, with just a CD player, 3.5mm auxiliary port, FM radio and a single USB port which could be used as an iPod Dock Connector. It didn’t support Bluetooth at all. A couple of years ago, we added a free-standing CarPlay and Android Auto screen which helped, but also meant having various wires trailing across the interior.

Dirty diesel

The other big disadvantage of the Peugeot 3008 was that it was a diesel. At the time we bought the car, dieselgate was thought to just apply to Volkswagen vehicles, but it may well be that our car was affected. We’ll see what happens when the case against Peugeot finally makes it to court.

Its emissions mean that we would have to pay to access certain clean air zones, such as London’s ULEZ and the clean air zone in Birmingham. As it is, we’ve not needed to enter those zones whilst we have the car, but will be taking our new electric car into Birmingham’s clean air zone next month. Ironically, our previous Nissan Note would’ve been fine in the ULEZ with its petrol engine, despite being an older car.

That being said, it did have a six speed (manual) gearbox, and that sixth gear was great for motorway driving.

Getting expensive

I wrote last year about how keeping our car roadworthy was getting expensive. It had been in the garage for repairs four times in as many months, and would be back in again within a month.

What proved to be the turning point was finding a patch of rust on one of the doors. Getting this fixed would have cost a lot of money, and with the car’s mileage continuing to increase, we decided it would be beyond economic repair. There’s also a laundry list of other issues:

  • The tyre pressure monitor on one of the wheels has never worked in the six years we’ve owned it, and so the car beeps loudly at you after around 10 minutes of driving to tell you this.
  • Various squeaks and knocking noises, suggesting bits of the car are working loose.
  • The air conditioning hasn’t really worked in well over a year, despite being recharged.
  • It seems to burn out headlight bulbs quicker than it should do.
  • It’s always leaked very small amounts of oil, but it’s never been clear where it’s leaking from.

I spent about an hour yesterday getting our personal effects out of the car, which included £3.04 in change that had ended up in various nooks and crannies.

Trading it in

We are doing a part-exchange, so the value of the old Peugeot 3008 will be used as a discount on the new car. However, with our car now having almost 130,000 miles on the clock, it’s worth less than £1000. Indeed, the part exchange quote we got was about 10% what we spent on it six years ago.

It’s probable that the car will be sold at auction. After which, who knows. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s stripped for useful parts and scrapped. It would be a shame, as it’s been a good car for us. It got us through the pandemic, and we’ve taken it on three holidays, including two in France. But unless someone is able to repair it cheaply, I doubt it’s worth much to anyone.

Incidentally, our old Nissan Note is still on the road, as far as we can tell. After we left it behind in France, the insurance company arranged for it to be collected and sold it to a car breakers. However, it looks like they fixed it up and got it back on the road, and it passed an MOT as recently as this May. I can only assume the breakage firm had enough spare parts to patch it up and sell it on.

Our journey towards an electric car – part IV

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A photo of a Rolec EVO electric car charger mounted on a Yorkshire stone wall

Time for the fourth post about our journey towards an electric car. Part one, in May, introduced the series, and part two last month answered the questions ‘why’ and ‘why now’. Meanwhile, part three talked about choosing a home electric car charger. Today, I’m going to talk about the charger that we had fitted.

We decided to buy our car charger first, before buying an electric car, so that we would be able to charge it at home from day one. So, back in May, we had a new Rolec EVO charger installed on the outside of our house, by a local electrical firm.

It’s an untethered charger, as the charger is located in quite an exposed place. That means that we can put the cable away when not in use, and it’s at less risk of being stolen. It connects over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; we chose a Wi-Fi model as it’s (just) in signal range of our router.

Around the charger socket is a ring light, which changes colour based on its status. As there’s no car plugged in, but it’s ready to charge, it’s flashing blue. It’ll turn green once a car is plugged in and charging.

The Rolec EVO app and OCPP

A screenshot of the Rolec Evo charging app on iOS

By default, the Rolec EVO uses its own app, which is fine. Within the app, you can start and stop charging sessions, and select the level of current to charge slower or faster. There are also the ‘Eco’ charging modes, which I’ll explain further down.

You can manage the Wi-Fi network that the charger is connected to (whilst connected via Bluetooth of course) and perform firmware updates – since we had this installed in May, there’s been a couple of updates released.

The Rolec EVO also supports OCPP, and so I could switch it over to a different platform. For older Rolec devices, the default platform is Monta (there’s a guide here) but others are available.

I may well consider switching to Monta, as there’s a Monta integration in HACS for Home Assistant. As yet, the backend for the Rolec EVO app doesn’t appear to have a public API. That means it’s not currently possible to add it to Home Assistant, other smart home platforms, or other electric car charging apps, unless you change to Monta.

Eco modes and schedules

As well as the big chonky electric cable that runs from your charger to your consumer unit (what most people call a fusebox), there’s a smaller cable attached. This connects to a CT clamp, that monitors your household electricity usage. If you put the charger in ‘Eco’ mode, then it’ll adjust the charging rate depending on how much power is being used elsewhere in the home. For example, if your oven is on, it might lower the current.

Eco+ mode is there for solar panel users, and so ensures that charging takes place when the sun is shining. That should save you money over using grid energy.

You can also set a charging schedule. This is helpful if you have an EV electricity tariff, which offers lower energy prices at set times of the day. That way, you can plug your car in, and then it’ll wait until the cheaper times kick in before it starts charging. We’re with Octopus (here’s my referral link), and they have two dedicated EV tariffs. One, ‘Intelligent Octopus Go’ requires you to have a certain model of car and a certain charger. It supports a lot of chargers, including other, older Rolec chargers, but not the newer EVO model that we have. The other, Octopus Go, simply offers cheaper electricity in the early hours of the morning. We’ll need to look into these once our smart meter is working again – you’ll need a working smart meter for both tariffs.

Future-proofing

I’ve mentioned that the Rolec EVO charger supports OCPP, so I can change to a different back-end system or run my own OCPP server. But it looks like it uses an Espressif ESP chip for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, based on how it presents itself to my router. So it might be possible to put custom firmware on it in future. Having spent a four figure sum getting installed, I don’t think I’ll be looking at this anytime soon, but it should mean I’m in a good place if Rolec were ever to go out of business.

We just need a car now

So that’s the charger that we’ve had installed. Now we just need a car to plug into it. The good news is that we put a deposit down on a new electric car on Saturday, and will be picking it up at the end of the week. I’ll conclude the series once we’ve got it.