Charging in the UK, when not living in the UK

[Jonathan27]

I currently live in Ireland, and plan to head back to the UK in a few weeks time to buy a used Nissan Leaf. As soon as I buy it I'm going to drive to Hollyhead and take the ferry home. Once in Ireland charring is easy, I have registered for the ESB charging app, and will be getting a home charger installed.

The bit that causes me some concern is, how do I activate the public charging points in the UK? I no longer have a UK address to register with, and I will only know the car reg once I have test driven the car and decided to buy it, at this point I will pretty much need to charge within a few hours, so cant wait for a card to arrive in the post.

Is there an app, or do charging points still need a physical NFC card?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

[DuncanM23]

There are a load of different charging providers, most of the older ones have their own app and a couple of newer ones have contactless card payments (I assume these would take your card). The best idea would be to go onto ZapMap and see what charging stations there are along your route to the ferry (you can filter it by charging plug - Chademo for a Leaf). Then you can organise a couple of apps (worth having alternatives) and register a credit card with them beforehand. This means that if there is an issue with registering your card you find out before the day when you can maybe call them up and get it sorted out. Some require you to put a deposit of £20 or something when you register, some just bill you as you use their chargers.

[Jonathan27]

Thanks very much. I had worried that I would need to register for a card and then wait for it to arrive, but this sounds simple enough.

Thanks again

[Knock_knock]

If you're only going to need a few QC's while out and about you could just use Instavolt, whose chargers use contactless payment with any credit card. Probably the most reliable network, and usually fairly well located sites.

[kambites]

The huge majority of chargers you can turn up with a smart phone, download an app, go through some torturous setup process, then charge. All new public charger installations now have to support credit/debit card payments so that will quickly become the norm, but it's not that common yet.