How easy is it to install a home high-speed EV charger? | Fifth Gear

[Music] despite all the incredible advances that have been made with electric vehicles there are still two fundamental concerns when it comes to owning one the most common one is range this kia soul ev will do 280 miles between recharges which is pretty good but you're always going to have half an eye on the life left in the battery and the second worry charging points currently there's around 25 000 public sockets in the uk a figure that is steadily rising but is also a figure that needs to be strapped to a rocket if the sale of new petrol and diesel cars is to end in 2030 as the government intends will we achieve that target who knows will arguments break out as cars cue to plug in hopefully not because many people have a much easier solution because as long as you've got off street parking and own your property or have permission from the landlord then you can refuel your car from the comfort of your own home so i'm going to find out exactly what's involved if you want to install a home charger there are a load of companies that now offer this service after a bit of research i chose a local company that had great online reviews their website has a choice of charges and like most tech paying a bit more gets you a few extra functions but first things first can all the different chargers charge all the different cars in a word yes however like our smartphones electric cars come with different shaped power sockets so you'll need to ensure you have the right cable to charge your ev for example early nissan leafs need a type 1 cable that looks like this whereas the kia soul needs a type 2. now let's talk about charging speeds which is another huge bonus to getting a box installed if i tried to charge the kia by using a domestic wall socket it would take around 28 hours to fully charge from empty how do i know well the car has a 64 kilowatt-hour battery the typical power of a normal three-pin socket is around 2.3 kilowatts divides 64 by 2.3 and you get roughly 28. however a typical wall box kicks out seven kilowatts which means the charging time is about three times faster it's good news so far but what about the actual installation if you think that simply involves a fitter turning up with a screwdriver and drill then you're going to be disappointed first your property needs to be inspected because not every home can have a charger before they can go ahead the company needs to ensure that your electricity supply is safely earthed some send out a technician however rather conveniently charged ev assess your property via an app you go through a series of questions and supply a bunch of photos this allows them to assess the state of your electrics and whether it's possible to run a cable from your fuse box to where you want the charger to be fixed this particular house was assessed a few weeks ago and it failed because it didn't have a particular type of isolator switch that problem has now been rectified at a cost of around a hundred pounds but it does highlight that there are no guarantees your property will permit a charger to be fitted and then it's time for ricky to step in he's our engineer for the day and he's straight down to work double checking that everything is safe first off i'm just going to do a few electrical tests make sure the property is safe and we can actually install on it right so that's all good what's next after that the trickiest bit trying to drill through this wall and set the cable out to the charger and with that ricky got his big drill out and then started laying out the cable that will connect to my fuse box to the new home charger is there a limit to how far the charger can be from the fuse box up to about 100 meters it's probably all right a hundred meters should be plenty for most uk homes though remember the cable can't cross other people's land if i lived in a flat would i be able to get one of these installed you could drop the cable down your wall into your designated parking area yeah 90 minutes later and the wall box was wired up and working so you've commissioned the system ricky check that it's all safe i got an app what features can i use on that there's quite a few you can schedule your charger so that it only charges at a certain time so if you've got a tariff where your energy is cheaper through the night you can tell the app you want your charge to start at say midnight and you want your car full by seven in the morning so it'll do that so with this app i don't have to be next to my car i could be anywhere in the world as long as it's all connected i can schedule and control the charging from here yeah that's right [Music] and finally what about the cost of all this this particular charger costs just over 1 000 pounds however providing you can prove that you own or lease an eevee you should qualify for a government grant of up to 350 quid bringing the price down to around 700. go for a more basic wall box and the price will be nearer to 600 pounds as 200 miles of range could cost as little as a fiver the charger should have paid for itself within the first 5000 miles of installation you

Channel: Fifth Gear

Views: 91,829

Keywords: Fifth Gear, car, review, fast, crash, fifth, gear, Tiff Needell, Jason Plato, Vicki Butler-Henderson, Jonny Smith, car review, New Cars, New Episodes Of Fifth Gear, Fifth Gear 2018, Bring Back Fifth Gear, Fifth, Gear, Full, Episodes, Live, Stream, New Fifth Gear Series, New Car Reviews

Id: kVsXbTKmwzg

Length: 6min 30sec (390 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 20 2021