There’s simply no denying that the UK isn’t ready for the shift to electric cars. From 2030, the sale of petrol vehicles will be banned for good but there’s a long way to go before millions of us will feel comfortable ditching fuel for battery-powered cars. As Express.co.uk recently discovered on a 1,000-mile road trip across Britain, the current charging infrastructure is woefully inadequate and topping up at motorway service stations can also be just as expensive as pumping the tank full of unleaded petrol.
With energy prices now higher than ever, even charging at home can be pretty pricey and when you factor in the additional cost of the EVs themselves (and free road tax ending in 2025) the move to electric doesn’t seem massively appealing right now.
Luckily, one firm called Ohme is trying to buck the trend by offering a clever home charger that can refill batteries for under a tenner. That sounds like the sort of savings we are all hoping for when going electric and it could make ditching fuel seem way more attractive.
Unlike some other chargers, Ohme is able to connect with the national grid in real time which means it can work out when reduced rates are available and only charge the car when things are cheaper. Some energy firms offer much lower prices when most people are asleep and the grid has plenty of spare capacity.
For example, anyone who uses Octopus energy as their supplier can take advantage of a special EV tariff which kicks in between the hours of 11.30pm and 5.30am every day. Clearly, nobody wants to wait up until midnight to plug in their car but the Ohme Pro charger takes care of this by not beginning the refill until the lower rate begins.
That means you can get home from work, attach the cable and let the device do the rest. Everything is controlled via the Ohme app where users can easily set their preferred charging options accordingly. If you need an instant refill you simply tell the charger to start adding energy but if you’re happy to wait for the cheaper rate a simple tap on the screen makes sure nothing starts until prices fall.
And choosing this option means significant savings. For example, stop at a service station and you may find you’ll pay around 65-70p per kWh. At that rate, it will cost about £60 to fill up a standard EV battery. Basic home charging costs around 34p per kWh which means it will cost around £26 for a refill.
Charge on the special overnight tariffs and that price drops to just 10p per kWh which means you could pay less than £8 for a full tank. Compare that to over £50 at the petrol pumps and it suddenly makes some sense to consider switching to an EV. In fact, Ohme is boasting that making the move to its technology could save £600 a year.
Of course, you will need to factor in the price of the home charger – which costs around £1,000 to install – but there are clearly savings to be made over the life of owning the car.
The big changeover to electric cars is now just seven years away and with no new petrol vehicles hitting UK roads from 2030 this latest technology is something we’re all going to have to get used to.