PHEV Owners - Do you use a charging network?

[JD]

I am hoping to join the PHEV club in April.

Now the car has a 7.6 kWh battery pack.

I have been looking at the various charging platforms/networks and their minimum one off fees seem to make charging a small battery like this actually quite expensive (relatively)

Are any of you using the networks or just relying on home charging?

[Jimbo.]

The Ecotricity network is free to use for now at least, however they only appear at motorway service stations. I use it, works just fine and is easy to sign up with. Else it's just charging at the office or at home.

[JD]

Jimbo. said:

The Ecotricity network is free to use for now at least, however they only appear at motorway service stations. I use it, works just fine and is easy to sign up with. Else it's just charging at the office or at home.

Ah worth me double checking, I thought they charge £20 to sign up!

I have also now found something called Source East which appear to have chargers near me.

I guess I need to find out what kind of plug is on the car to work out which places I can use.

[JonV8V]

Look at zapmap and plug share web sites for details of points.

CYC is another network to ecotricity except they front various schemes/charging point owners like some council schemes and I think companies like Asda rather than have their own points. The charging prices vary from free to quite expensive but the websites all tell you. You're unlikely to really live by these charging options in a PHEV but as a bonus top up when convenient it might be worth while if free.

[dave_s13]

The paid for ones don't float my boat and I'm never near or go far enough to use the free ecotricity points.

Basically, the paid for ones cost the same as home charging, pretty much, so unless you need to use them for purposes of range then there's no point.

[jkh112]

Ecotricity for a free charge when I stop at motorway services (or Ikea!). The paid for networks aren't cost effective as I find they work out just as expensive as using petrol.

[JD]

Cheer guys, thanks for all the details.

When the maps state a charge of (for example) 500p, does that mean a fixed charge no matter how much juice you use?

As above it looks like a paid for charger on a PHEV is about as expensive as petrol.

[modeller]

JD said:

Cheer guys, thanks for all the details.

When the maps state a charge of (for example) 500p, does that mean a fixed charge no matter how much juice you use?

As above it looks like a paid for charger on a PHEV is about as expensive as petrol.

With such a small battery, probably only makes sense to charge at home/office. Please get chargebump app if you're intending to use rapid public chargers so as not to block the pure BEVs.