EV CHARGING FOR BEGINNERS!

in this video i want to go back to basics a little bit and give you an introduction to rapid charges and the different types of connector that you're going to find if you're new to evs this will be quite helpful if you've had an ev for a while you might not learn very much [Music] i often see people ask the same questions over and over again they've just got or they're thinking of buying an electric car and they're worried about how they're going to charge it where they can charge it especially when they're out on the road on long journeys and if you're going to be taking a long journey you're probably going to need a rapid charger to top up your range and get you going again so you can go beyond whatever range your car has so i'm here with my mg zsev it has a wltp range of 163 miles and that's a little bit like the fuel consumption figures for petrol and diesel cars under ideal test conditions that's the range that it is claimed to have in the real world i think you'd probably be maybe 140 miles in the summer more like 120 125 in the winter in a previous video i did a real world winter range test in minus three uh where i did a 110 mile journey and it was looking like sort of 120 125 miles was definitely the limit to the point where you you probably run out if you tried to push it any further uh 19 miles to go and i've run out of screen wash so if i wanted to go further than that if i want to do a couple hundred miles gonna have to stop somewhere rapid charge get going again the best way to find the rapid charger is using an app or a website called zap map there's a link in the description if you haven't heard of that map basically it maps charging stations of all types all across the uk so you can find rapid chargers destination chargers of the type that you need for your car and when you look for a charger and i'll show you alongside this video i'll show you if you search for this one here that i'm at which is a charge your car station it will show you the connector types that are available and this is where people often get a little bit confused so let's look at the three connectors we've got here and what they're used for so the first one is chademo it looks like this one's that map and this is what the connector looks like this is a dc charging cable and it will only fit cars that have a chademo connector and the most common one of those is a nissan leaf there are a bunch of other evs that use chademo but the nissan leaf is the one that's proper mass market and any leaf on the market uses chademo to charge quickly next up and this is the dc rapid charging cable that the mgz sev uses is ccs that's what a ccs cable looks like and if you have a ccs car which is the vast majority of evs sold in the past few years and and will be the standard going forward you'll need one of these cables to charge it and then we have this one and this is what causes the most confusion i find this is a type two ac connector and this looks absolutely identical to what you'd use to charge your car at home except you've got a much thicker cable and the reason for that thicker cable is this is a 43 kilowatt ac connector and when you look on zap map you'll see for this charger and i'll show you you've got 50 kilowatt dc chademo 50 kilowatt dc ccs and 43 kilowatt ac and you might be excused for thinking well that's a 43 kilowatt charger that's fast that cable will fit my car because it's got a type 2 plug i should use that and that will charge my car almost as quickly as the dc will and that's where you're wrong because ac charging is governed by the on-board charger in the car a dc charger charges the battery directly an ac charger is to go via the charging unit that's in the car and turn that ac current into dc cars like the mgz sev can do that but they can only charge at 6.6 kilowatts which is the kind of speed you'll get from your home charger if you plug this in it will charge at 6.6 kilowatts so you might think you're getting a rapid charge but you'll sit there for an hour and it'll barely have charged at all 43 kilowatt ac is only really of use to older renault zoes which don't have dc charging and have a 43 kilowatt on-board charger the same applies you might see 22 kilowatt as well again you need to have a car that can take advantage of it a lot of cars on the market today can't and they'll only charge at 6.6 kilowatts or 7 kilowatts sometimes 11 kilowatts you need to know what the car that you have is capable of doing and if you've got one that has a ccs connector the chances are it won't have fast ac as well so be careful and don't think that this is the answer to all your problems because it's very unlikely to be so there we are that's the three connector types you need to pick the one that's right for your car with most modern evs that'll be ccs but do do a little bit of research make sure you're picking the right one because if you turn up to a charging point it doesn't actually have what you need it's going to be a bad day for you and zap map is definitely one of the best resources you can find for finding a charger i hope you find this video useful i just wanted to clear up one of the most common things i see people asking about be pay attention to the connector types you have available what you need for your car and you won't go far wrong thanks very much for watching i'll see you next time

Channel: Modern Heroes

Views: 259,446

Keywords: electric cars for beginners, ev beginners guide, newbie ev, ev charging, electric car charging, electric car beginners guide, electric vehicle, electric vehicle charging, type 2 connector, ccs charging, rapid charging, public charging

Id: Ajrmw2jTdHM

Length: 5min 58sec (358 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021