Can I add an EV charger for a PHEV to this CU

[morqthana]

Where have you been hiding away from the News? EV VED is £195 same as many other vehicles as of 1st April 2025.

New VEDS are also now subject to the over £40k supplements (if applicable).

There were an awful lot of VED renewals by EV users in March at the £0 rate.

Maybe with VED, as they can't have bands by emissions, they should have bands based on vehicle weight.

 

[morqthana]

Another argument I've never held much regard for. Highly likely the wires that carry electricity to the houses pass under where the car is parked,

Where A car is parked, not necessarily one which has anything to do with the house it's outside, or even near.

And don't they tend to be under pavements, rather than roads?

and the assertion that the power must pass through the meter in the car owner's house, before coming back out to the car which must be parked in front of the house, in order to have the right person pay for the power their car consumes is abject nonsense

So how would you ensure that the right person pays?

 

[plugwash]

Another argument I've never held much regard for. Highly likely the wires that carry electricity to the houses pass under where the car is parked, and the assertion that the power must pass through the meter in the car owner's house, before coming back out to the car which must be parked in front of the house, in order to have the right person pay for the power their car consumes is abject nonsense

Unfortunately "public charging" tends to be a lot more expensive than residential charging. There are a number of reasons for this.

A small part of the reason is taxes, electricity for domestic purposes has a VAT rate of 5%, whereas electrcity not for domestic purposes has a VAT rate of 20%. An EV charger fed from a domestic supply counts as "domestic", one with it's own supply does not.

Part of the reason is that if someone wants a "new supply" then they have to pay upfront for any grid strengthening required. If someone just draws more power from their existing supply then the electricity distributor has little choice but to just deal with the consequences. Similarly "export" prices tend to be much lower than "import" prices, so you save a lot of money by using electricity in the same installation where you generate it rather than exporting it from one installation and exporting it into another.

Part of the reason is that there are more players involved, with home charging it's just you and the electricity supply industry. Public charging adds another company into the mix who needs to cover the costs of running their charging network and make some profit to fund growth and investment returns.

Part of the reason is that governments protect domestic electricity customers in a way that do not protect other customers of electricty.

Part of the reason is that billing someone for lots of small transactions is simply more expensive than sending them a monthly bill.

Part of the reason is that utilisation of public EV chargepoints is often poor.

Part of the reason is it seems that EV chargepoint operators don't operate "time of use" tarrifs.

 

[ericmark]

Why?

Not a clue, just know they do.

 

[robinbanks]

....

I understand what you're saying, but they're all political problems that can be done away with legislatively

Post being assessed to have no off street parking home owners on street X can plug their EVs into any on street charger within Y miles of their house, tap their RFID card/app/bank card and get billed for the energy consumed by the charger, which does so happen to be connected to the wire serving their neighbour's neighbour's house but it doesn't matter because has its own meter, and the central server it communicates with puts the kWh it consumes on their own bill at 5%, etc. Software can solve all these problems, connecting the chargers to power is the trivial part

 

[morqthana]

Not a clue, just know they do.

What happens, or doesn't happen, if they cannot connect?

 

[morqthana]

Is the UK infrastructure going to cope with fast charging in dwellings?

Sorted...

 

[Why Not Indeed]

What you're saying makes a certain amount of sense, electrons are pretty fungible after all. But doubt it'll ever happen.

 

[robinbanks]

Where A car is parked, not necessarily one which has anything to do with the house it's outside, or even near.

But that's the kind of thinking that keeps proposing "EV problems" like "you have to have off street parking to charge an EV and make sure the right person pays for the electricity"

Pause for a moment to consider how you, as an EV owner, end up being billed for the electricity your car consumed while it's parked in Aldi's car park, plugged into a "public" charger.

The wire that charger is connected to did not route through your house

And don't they tend to be under pavements, rather than roads?

And that makes them more impossible to connect a pavement mounted charger to how?

So how would you ensure that the right person pays?

All chargers have a meter inside, they can have an RFID reader in, a payment terminal in, and they connect to a central coordinating system that does cool stuff like balance the load on the grid and offer you an app to control the charging of the car. That system receives reports of energy consumed, and it knows who you are because you identified yourself by RFID card, bank card or mobile app. One day it'll even just know the car from a built in unique identifier in the car

This isn't pie in the sky; it exists today in nearly every charger you see

This means we can stick 20 chargers in a pavement down a street, we can let the home owners park and plug in anywhere and we can bill the correct person, because they identify themselves when they start the charge. All the technology is there. We can even stop people from 3 streets over parking on this street and using these chargers, because these chargers are software gated to only be usable by residents of eg this street and the two neighbouring ones

 

[spile]

PHEV is perfect for us. Only ever charge at home and the vast majority of trips use battery only. When away from home and on longer journeys use hybrid. Owned the Ioniq since 2019.

 

[JohnW2]

This isn't pie in the sky; it exists today in nearly every charger you see .... All the technology is there.

As you say, the technology exists which could easily address the great majority of perceived 'problems' with EV charging.

However, you're talking about a massive infrastructure undertaking. If experiences with things like 'smart' meter rollout and HS2 are anything to go by, one has to wonder how many people reading this will still be alive by the time the technology is fully deployed.

 

[Risteard]

EV users are, of course, currently enjoying a honeymoon. Sooner or later, government is going to have to do something to replace the massive revenue income they currently have from fuel excise duty. It's currently about 53p per litre, so maybe £25-£30 for each fill-up with petrol/diesel - and when government decide on a way of maintaining that sort of level of revenue from vehicle users, those with EVs are probably in for a pretty big shock

Hardly a honeymoon when I'm being taxed the same as a Diesel van. I would call it rape. We also don't have the 7p/kWh night-time rate here, but the cheapest is over double that.

 

[JohnW2]

Hardly a honeymoon when I'm being taxed the same as a Diesel van. I would call it rape. We also don't have the 7p/kWh night-time rate here, but the cheapest is over double that.

Well, your "here" must be very different from the rest of the UK.

In terms of my "here", fuel for a diesel van attracts a ~53p per litre fuel excite duty, plus 20% VAT on both the cost of the fuel and the duty. In contrast, those with EVs which they charge at home pay zero fuel excise duty and pay only 5% VAT on the electricity they use for charging.

As I implied in what I wrote before, annual government revenue income from fuel excise duty is in the same ballpark as the cost of running the police force or fire service for a year, or running the NHS for 6-7 weeks. As that income is gradually lost, they are obviously going to have to do something to restore that income - and, as I said, the fairest way would seem to be to continue to get it, one way or another, from vehicle users.

 

[Why Not Indeed]

the fairest way would seem to be to continue to get it, one way or another, from vehicle users.

Why? "Because that's how we used to do it" isn't sufficient justification.

 

[EFLImpudence]

If only your electricity meter could distinguish between household use and car charging.