Do you charge?

I charge whenever I’m at home unless I know my next journey can easily be completed on whatever remaining battery. As my commute to work pretty much fully drains the battery I then plug in at the park and ride assuming availability. This means that most of my driving in week is electric only. Weekend is predominately electric only.

For me, paying the £8 or so for Polar Plus pays for itself. Especially in winter and drawing an extra 3kw or so preheating the car before I travel home!

Did you know that OVO are Now offering a tariff called EV Everywhere that gives you two years of Polar for free. Mind you the per kWh rate is not the cheapest so you have to do your sums.

Hi yes thanks and I’ll be looking at it when my current deal comes to an end.

Lance said:

I charge whenever I’m at home unless I know my next journey can easily be completed on whatever remaining battery. As my commute to work pretty much fully drains the battery I then plug in at the park and ride assuming availability. This means that most of my driving in week is electric only. Weekend is predominately electric only.

For me, paying the £8 or so for Polar Plus pays for itself. Especially in winter and drawing an extra 3kw or so preheating the car before I travel home!

Click to expand...

I can see it fits in for you well, so do you just leave it there for 7 hours plugged in and go to work some distance away? are there many chargers? I imagine the EV crowd won't be keen on you.

BobEngineer said:

Lance said:

I charge whenever I’m at home unless I know my next journey can easily be completed on whatever remaining battery. As my commute to work pretty much fully drains the battery I then plug in at the park and ride assuming availability. This means that most of my driving in week is electric only. Weekend is predominately electric only.

For me, paying the £8 or so for Polar Plus pays for itself. Especially in winter and drawing an extra 3kw or so preheating the car before I travel home!

Click to expand...

I can see it fits in for you well, so do you just leave it there for 7 hours plugged in and go to work some distance away? are there many chargers? I imagine the EV crowd won't be keen on you.

Click to expand...

That is the problem with charging while at work. I used to commute into London a lot and could, in theory, charge in the car park that I used, but they only had a limited number of charging points and it was a fair walk from the office that I was using. If I left it plugged in all day, I would have been blocking it for other users, but I really could not afford the time to walk back to the car park and move the car after a couple of hours - quite apart from the very real risk that I would find it full and be left with nowhere to park!

BobEngineer said:

Lance said:

I charge whenever I’m at home unless I know my next journey can easily be completed on whatever remaining battery. As my commute to work pretty much fully drains the battery I then plug in at the park and ride assuming availability. This means that most of my driving in week is electric only. Weekend is predominately electric only.

For me, paying the £8 or so for Polar Plus pays for itself. Especially in winter and drawing an extra 3kw or so preheating the car before I travel home!

Click to expand...

I can see it fits in for you well, so do you just leave it there for 7 hours plugged in and go to work some distance away? are there many chargers? I imagine the EV crowd won't be keen on you.

Click to expand...

Leave it for more like 11 hours . Then its the 10 minute ride into the city centre.

There is only 1 post, 2 points but they will be putting more in soon I'm told, although they were confused as to whether it was going to be a single rapid, or a rapid and more destination chargers. That's the problem with talking to people who don't know the jargon either though they are the person responsible for the site!

Being a slow 'destination charger', the EV crowd generally accept that they will be tired up for hours each day. But if they hate me, I'll soon get over it. First come first served! In fact, for the benefit of green miles, the BEVs should give me priority as I bet they've got enough in the battery to get home again anyway (and if not, they've got the wrong tool for the job).

I charge every night at home. I generally also charge up at home after every journey and leave it plugged in, unless I’ve only done a small distance and I know I’ll be using it again the same day.

I’ve had mine for 2 years and have only ever charged it once away from home. That was at our local IKEA and was more for the novelty than anything else. The hassle of doing it, and the fact that the Ecotricity charge now makes it uneconomic anyway, means that I won’t be bothered. Even when I am on long journeys, and come across a free charging point at motorway services, I don’t bother charging it. The risk of something going wrong, and being stranded, is too big a risk for me to take when the benefit is limited to gaining only around 15 miles of range at motorway speeds.