Zappi charger on red brick wall with woman pressing buttons

Electric car charging has never been easier

Powering your EV journey at home, at work and on the move.

EV charging at home

EV charging at home is convenient and cost-efficient. Plug in your EV at night when energy is cheapest and wake up fully charged. Save up to 80% compared with petrol or diesel costs with Intelligent Octopus Go - the EV specific tariff.

Charging at home

EV charging on the go

The extensive public charging network makes the UK a great place to drive electric. There are more public EV charging stations than petrol stations, with more being added all the time. So you can keep your EV topped up on the go.

Charging on the go

Where can I charge my electric car?

You can charge your car at home, on the street, in car parks and at service stations. Or you can even borrow your neighbours chargers in your local community.

The speed of the charger normally fits the location you'll find it in. When you can stay parked for a long time the charger will usually be a bit slower - like at home or in a supermarket car park. When you’re on the move, you’ll find fast and rapid chargers that will help you get charged up quickly and on your way.

Find chargers in your local community

Community EV charging allows neighbours to share their home chargers with other local drivers.

There are almost 400,000 home chargers in the UK. Most drivers live within a mile of a home charger that's available to be rented out. We've partnered up with Co Charger to make charging easy and convenient for all EV drivers.

Co Charger is a bit like Airbnb for electric car chargers. It allows drivers to share home chargers with their neighbours and helps more people switch to an EV, even if they don’t have a driveway.

Explore community charging

What are the different speeds of EV chargers?

Chargers have different power ratings: slow, fast and rapid.

Slow Chargers

Typical location:: Home
Avg. miles per hour:: 15 miles

Fast Chargers

Typical location:: Home, work, public
Avg. miles per hour:: 25 miles

Rapid Chargers

Typical location:: Public
Avg. miles per hour:: <200 in 30 mins

How long does it take to charge an electric car?

There are three things that determine how long it'll take to charge your car. The size of the battery, what speed the battery can charge at, and the speed of the charger.

Imagine this: charging an electric car is like filling up a swimming pool with a hosepipe. When you have a big pool to fill, a big hose pipe will do the job the quickest. But if you’ve got time to spare, using a small hose pipe will still do the job - it’ll just take a bit longer.

A simple calculation to work out EV charging times

We can work out the time to charge with a little bit of maths. All you need to know is the size of the car battery in kWh and the speed of the charger you're plugged into.

The calculation goes like this:

Size of car battery ÷ speed of charger = time to charge

Here's an example:

A 51kWh MG4 plugged into a 100kW rapid charger at the service station (51 ÷ 100) = 30 minutes to charge.
A 51kWh MG4 plugged into a 7kW home charger overnight (51 ÷ 7) = up to 7 hours to charge.

How much does it cost to charge an electric car?

The slower the charger, the less it costs to top up your EV battery.

The cheapest and easiest way to charge your EV is overnight on a home charger. With Intelligent Octopus Go you can charge overnight with cheap, green energy at a cost of just 2.4p per mile.

It costs more to charge your EV using rapid chargers. You’re paying for the speed and convenience of charging up on the go.

Most EV drivers do a mixture of charging at home, on the street, and at rapid chargers.

Find out everything you need to know about charging in our EV Hub.

Explore the EV Hub

What does kWh mean?

kWh means kilowatt hour. In an electric car, it's a unit of stored energy.

You'll see that car batteries are labelled with kWh. This lets you know how large the car battery is and how many kWh it can store.

Chargers are labelled with kW. This lets you know how fast a charger will top up your car.

In simple terms, the smaller your car battery is in kW and the higher the charger wattage, the quicker the charge. Check out our charging pages for more information on charging speeds and the home chargers we offer.

When should I charge my electric car?

To preserve battery life, you should try to k eep your car charged between 20 - 80%.

There will be times when you go over and under these percentages, but try to keep this in mind for you day to day charging.

Are there free electric car charging points in the UK?

There are plenty of free charging points in the UK. They can usually be found in supermarket car parks or council run car parks. Free charging is a major benefit of driving electric. When was the last time someone filled up your fuel powered car for free?

Can I charge my car at any EV charge point?

You can charge your electric car at almost any charging station as long as your charging cable works with the sockets and plugs at the station.

Charging stations have different sockets and plugs depending on what kind of car you have, where you are, and whether it's an AC (fast) or DC (rapid) charging station. Read all about how to use electric car charging points here.