252 - The No Home Charging Update Episode 2

Gary :

Hi, I'm Gary, and this is EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles, and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today, we'll be looking at the reality of living with no home charger. Here's what you can expect on this episode.

Bob Murphy :

I am a creature of habit, though, and I'll tend to use the same charge points over and over again. So on the road up to Inverness, for instance, Aviemore is one that I've stopped at loads of times. It's one that I know works. If there's toilets nearby, there's a shop nearby and stuff like that.

Gary :

Our main topic of discussion today is living without a home charger. Now, last week, we talked about the solutions out there for people who don't have home chargers.

We looked at pavement charging, gully charging, workplace charging, apartment charging, destination charging, and rapid charging. And the one thing that most of these have in common is that they rely on the public charging network in some way, shape, or form. The exceptions there are obviously apartment dwelling and gully charging.

But the big issue with this is that it's considerably more expensive than home charging. For example, with various time of day tariffs, it's possible for people who can use their own home charging to pay as little as seven pence a kilowatt hour with OVO Energy. With a car that gets three and a half miles per kilowatt hour, that gives you a price of two pence a mile.

But with public charging, the figures go up by a large amount. The absolute cheapest public charging you can get on a widespread basis is about 38. 2 pence a kilowatt hour.

That's for Tesla charging off peak with a subscription. For AC charging, the cheapest tariff is 39 pence a kilowatt hour with Chargis Pay As You Go night tariff. And to compare and contrast the 39 pence a kilowatt hour gives you a price of about 11 pence a mile.

Not ridiculously high, but a lot higher than two pence a mile. According to ZapMap, the average price of AC charging in the UK is 53 pence a kilowatt hour or about 15 pence a mile. If you go up to rapid or ultra rapid charging, that jumps to 80 pence a kilowatt hour or almost 23 pence a mile.

Now for reference, a typical diesel car in the UK will cost around 14 pence a mile and a typical petrol car will cost 15 pence a mile. Obviously, these figures don't include the servicing, tyre wear, oil changes, etc. that are associated with ICE cars, but you get my meaning.

Basically, unless you're really careful, it can be more expensive to charge an EV on public charging than with fossil fuels. Now we've covered why public charging is so much more expensive than home charging in several episodes before. The too long didn't read is that there are a lot of external costs associated with public charging that home charging doesn't have.

For example, my standing charge at the house for electricity is around 50 pence a day, give or take. That's £180 a year. The standing charge for a rapid charging site can be upwards of £8,000 per year.

So we're talking about two completely different things. There is a discussion to be had about why these fees, and there are many others, are so much higher for public charging than home charging, but that's not the focus of today's episode and I don't think anyone really expects price parity between home charging and public charging. What I do want to look at today is the daily life of someone living without a home charger.

I've heard lots of different stories about how this actually works out in real life, so I wanted to get chapter and verse for someone who does it. Now we've had Ron Godfrey on the show previously, and he was a roundtable guest back in one of our earlier episodes. He's also someone living without home charging, but he's a Tesla driver, so it's probably he has it a little bit easier and a little bit cheaper.

What I want you to find is someone who doesn't have a Tesla, doesn't have home charging, and does a reasonable amount of mileage, and makes it work.

Bob Murphy : So I'm Bob Murphy. I'm a technical specialist, or technical executive rather, for one of the big Sykes Energy companies based in Scotland, and I support our sales and projects teams with delivery of EV charging infrastructure across the UK.

Gary :

Now the reason you're on here today is because you are someone who fulfils a couple of very specific criteria. First of all, you don't have home charging. Second of all, you do a reasonably high mileage per month. You're not one of these who just does five miles back and forth to the office. And you don't drive a Tesla. Now that's not a political statement in the current environment. It just means that you don't necessarily have access to any of the cheap or convenient Tesla charging through the supercharger network. Now you've kindly offered to do a little bit of data gathering for me with your charging regime, as I say, you don't have the access to home charging. So what I want to do is have a little bit of a look at that in detail, which is going to make fascinating podcasting experience as we're referencing the spreadsheet that only you and I can see, and none of the listeners can, but I'll put a link to that in the show notes.

So while I'm looking at that, just start with the car and tell me what you're driving, please.

Bob Murphy :

oul first edition. So it's a: 2020

Gary :

Big fan of the Kia Soul, as you know, I had one of those, the one before yours with a 30 kilowatt hour battery. Do you have any data about the sort of efficiency that you're getting on it?

Bob Murphy :

Yeah. So lifetime efficiency on the car is around about 3.8 to 3.7 miles per kilowatt hour for me just now. And that's with a lot of motorway driving, with a fairly heavy right foot. And I just enjoy driving the car. It's great fun to drive. It's got a fantastic stereo. That's my second happiest place. If I handed the car to one of my friends, if I handed it to Kevin Booker, he would get something like 10 miles per kilowatt hour out of it. But realistically, I think four miles is a really good average. Four miles per kilowatt hour is a really good average for this type of vehicle, this type of platform.

Gary :

Yeah. Kevin, I'm sure he's made a deal with the devil somewhere to get efficiency figures like that. But anyway, so tell me a little bit about how you track the data that you've got. How long were you actually tracking your charging for?

Bob Murphy :

I was tracking it for about four weeks with a little bit of a pause in the middle because I realised that I was tracking the data slightly incorrectly. But basically, it was just a nice simple process of looking at the miles travelled based on the odometer eventually, looking at the charge that went back into the vehicle, the cost of that energy to recharge the vehicle. And that was really it. A nice simple calculation, which we've all done at some point for fuel efficiency and so on and so forth. But it just gave me some base figures to work from that would visualise, if you like, the cost of what my actual charging or refuelling costs me without a home charger.

Gary :

And as I say, I'm going to put a link to the, with your permission, I'm going to put a link to the data out in the show notes. One of the things I particularly like about it, as you say, you've tracked your starting mileage, ending mileage, and if you've got multiple journeys on a day, you've put that in, how much energy you've taken on board, what that's cost, total cost per day, etc. But you've also made some nice little notes in the extreme right hand column there. So you've given information about whether it was a short local trip, what sort of climate you were setting, or what the settings were on the climate, heated seats and things, and any, not necessarily glitches. is, but any little issues that happened with the charging. So, there's a huge amount of data in there, which should be good.

Bob Murphy :

Oh, yeah. Some pleasant surprises. Well, yes.

Gary :

I mean, I like to see the word free charge on there. It's always nice when you can do that. But we'll look at that. So, what... I mean, I can see the figures, but just for the people who are listening, how many miles did you cover over the period?

Bob Murphy :

Oh, probably around about a thousand miles over the course of the month or there or thereabouts. And I'm actually commuting from Edinburgh to Glasgow and driving around Scotland for a bit and local trips and so on and so forth, thank me.

Gary :

It's actually nearer to: 1500

Bob Murphy :

Was it? Oh, well.

Gary :

Yeah, you did about 800 and plus on the first week or first couple of weeks and 700 odd on the second week. So, it's a little bit more than you thought there. Now, do you remember off the top of your head what your average pence per mile calculation was?

Bob Murphy :

I think I worked around about 14 pence per mile for the four-week period. And that was including accounting for the costs of... or accounting for what would have been the costs of the free charge, plus all the other charging that was involved as well.

Gary :

So, as I look down through the spreadsheet, what I find... I don't know why I find it remarkable, but what does jump out, particularly in the first couple of weeks, you actually do remarkably little charging. I think you've got four charging sessions over the whole for the first two weeks, and three of those were on consecutive days because you did quite a long distance. Do you want to talk us through those, please?

Bob Murphy :

Yeah. So, I usually... My car lives on the street outside my flat. I live in a tenemented flat in Edinburgh. It's public parking on the road outside. There's no off-street parking. So, this is why I don't have a home charger. There's just no facility for it. So, more often than not, the car just lives on the street. It's not plugged in, and it's very, very rarely ever at 100% charge. So, I just jump into it and I use it whenever I need it. And whenever I need to charge, I charge on the go, or if I'm going to work, I'll charge at the workplace. So, I'm one of those drivers that always had the habit of having very little in the petrol tank. I'd always just buy a fiver here and there when I was out and about. And that habit's continued into the electric vehicle trip as well.

Gary :

Talk to me a little bit about the long distance trip that you did on the 3rd and 4th, or 3rd, 4th and 5th of February.

Bob Murphy :

Yeah. So, that was a run up to Inverness. So, Edinburgh to Inverness as part of a work commitment, basically. So, that was a fairly straightforward day for me. I used to spend a lot of time in a past career driving all around Scotland, doing upwards of 35,000 miles a year. So, a trip up the A9 is not a big deal. So, starting off, the car wasn't at 100%. I just jumped in it and went. I think, if I remember correctly, I had one stop on the way up just to have a quick break for myself and just to charge the car and grab a pie. And while I did that, that was a 20 minute stop and then jumped back in the car and kept on going. So, yeah, fairly straightforward, easy trip. That's well within the capability of the vehicle and nowadays, well within the capability of the infrastructure.

Gary :

There are a couple of little bits that you've highlighted in red here, which are quite interesting. You managed to get a free charge at a BP Pulse location.

Bob Murphy :

Yeah. The gods must have been smiling on me that day. But I stopped at Longman Road in Inverness to charge the car before I went back home. That was a chance to open up the laptop and check the work emails and things like that. And I wanted to try and take advantage of the higher power charger to reduce the waiting time so that I could turn things around as quick as possible and get moving. And when I went to use the charger, I wouldn't take contactless, which was a bit annoying. So, I had to try and remember my login for the BP Pulse app, which I eventually remembered, and then was able to start the charge on the app. And when the charge finished, it said that it didn't cost me anything. So, I didn't argue with that and just drove away.

Gary :

But what you have actually done, as you mentioned already, is that you've actually logged the nominal cost, what that would have been had you had to pay for it. So, I think there was about £45 worth of electricity went in there. So, that hasn't skewed the figures inappropriately overall, which is good.

Bob Murphy :

No, it hasn't skewed them that much. I mean, that would have been about £0. 85 per kilowatt hour on that charger, which is quite a high unit price. But because it's a rapid charger or a high-powered rapid charger, you're paying for that convenience as well. Now, as you'll know with the Kia Soul, the battery management system doesn't often let you take full advantage of the maximum charging speed the car can obtain. So, I would have been better off just going for a normal 50-kilowatt charger nearby. It would have taken me the same amount of time and cost me less.

Gary :

So, it just goes to show that those kinds of things are stuff you have to take into factor when you're sort of planning your stops. I think it's also worth reminding the listeners that when you do your commute to work, you're heading down the M8, which is obviously a motorway, you do put the cruise on and do 70 miles an hour. So, it's not like you're sort of hypermiling or doing a Kevin Booker, as we like to say, and trying to maximise the distance. You're just driving it like you would drive a normal internal combustion engine car, aren't you?

Bob Murphy :

Yeah, absolutely. The heated seat's on, the heated steering wheel's on, the climate control's set for 18 or 19 degrees. Once I hit the motorway, it's on 70 and the adaptive cruise control just kind of takes over. And every so often, I'll just have to put the foot down to clear a bit of space or overtake a slower moving vehicle. But other than that, it's fairly standard. The car manages that all quite well. If I was really paying attention, I could take the cruise control off, I would have the instant efficiency monitor on my dashboard. So, I could modulate my driving to get the best possible efficiency out of the car. Again, referencing Kevin, one of the tricks that Kevin uses is that he doesn't have regen on. So, you cost an awful lot of time, which is great. If you're coming downhill, let gravity do the work for you. It saves a lot of energy. Sometimes when the car's in cruise control, the car's still pushing itself down the hill, basically. So, if I was paying a bit more attention, I could maybe get the energy use down a little bit. But it's one of these things that most normal drivers don't think about that. We've been doing this for a long time. I've been driving EVs now for more than 10 years. And the efficiency back then was the absolute goal because the range was so limited. So, you had to eke the most out of the cars that you could. But nowadays, it's not so much of an issue when you've got battery packs that will comfortably do 400 miles on one charge. You don't have to worry about that so much.

Gary :

Tell us a little bit about, not necessarily your driving strategy, but your charging strategy. Now, I have certain key charge point operators that I like to use because I know where they are. I know that I can get a reasonable speed. I know what they cost and I know they're reliable. But I don't do anywhere near as much public charging as you do. So, do you have a specific strategy? Do you say, well, I will always use this charge point operator? Or are you a little bit less sanguine about that and you just use whichever one's there?

Bob Murphy :

It's very much a scattergun approach, I suppose. I am a creature of habit though and I'll tend to the same charge points over and over again. So on the road up to Inverness for instance Aviemore is one that I've stopped at loads of times, it's one that I know works. There's toilets nearby, there's a shop nearby and stuff like that. But I don't limit myself to one network. I suppose I do tend to use ChargePlace Scotland more but that's simply because I was the network manager for ChargePlace Scotland once upon a time ago and I know the network quite well, although it has changed a little bit over the years. So if I'm doing long distance routes I'll probably stick to the same places or if I know I'm going to a place where there's a destination charger nearby such as the workplace car park or the public car park across from work then I'll just use those ones where I can. But otherwise there's not a lot of really in-depth planning goes into it to be honest.

Gary :

Now if you're just doing your regular commute or going around the local area, a lot of your charging or that which you've shown here is I assume AC charging. So you've parked up for eight hours while you've been at work and you're paying I think 40 pence a kilowatt hour and a one pound connection fee at most of these. How useful has that been rather than having to go out and go to a 50 kilowatt ChargePlace Scotland one for example?

Bob Murphy :

That's been really useful and I was fortunate enough to be in a, where my home's based there was a public charge point less than five minutes walk away from me. So that was great because I could park the car there overnight when I needed to and it would be ready to go the next morning. So there was always a kind of close by public charger that I could use. That business has since changed it to a private charger so that does limit some of the opportunities closer to home if you like. I think the next nearest public charger to me now is probably more than 15 minutes walk away for a couple bus rides. There are ones closer but they're reserved for car clubs. So I do find myself not charging the car as often as I used to but it's not really impacted how I use it. It just means that I'm more reliant on the workplace charging or the quick splash and dash wherever I go to on any other trip.

Gary :

Would you say it has been an inconvenience not having home charging?

Bob Murphy :

Not for me, no, because I never had a home petrol station. So I'm used to just going hunting for energy and hunting for fuel. So it's never been that much of a hassle. It would be a great convenience to have one because I would not only benefit from cheaper electricity rates, I'd benefit from cheaper charging. It would make life an awful lot easier in the winter time for having the car preheated and so on and so forth. But at the same time it's not really been a hindrance for the EV journey just now. And that's across multiple different vehicles across multiple different years and multiple different scenarios.

Gary :

Now as we've already established, all the trips that you've logged for me were all in Scotland and as you said a number of them were using Charged Place Scotland equipment. Do you think that the costs would increase dramatically if you came down to say London on a long run and couldn't use Charged Place Scotland?

Bob Murphy :

It depends. There are multiple options across multiple different charging networks for those kind of long distance drives. So if I did a bit of shopping around and did things like download the native app for those particular networks and things, I would maybe get a discount on that charging cost as a goal. And the other thing as well is that you don't always have to charge to 100%. You don't even always have to charge to 90%. You just take on board what you need and that reduces the costs. To give an example, I went to a car show called Rustival last year and that was based at the British Motor Museum down in Gaydon. So that was a nice long drive down the M6 to Leamington Spa and it was a case of charging the car on the go, stopping to grab a Greggs, going to 80%, going on to the next one from there. But I knew where I was staying, there was a public car park nearby with a BP AC that I could use for overnight so that I could just leave the car show the next day and head straight back north again and repeat the journey in reverse. So I think in the end it was a two stop strategy and it was I think 60 quid in total for the trip to drive down. So there's loads of different options, loads of different ways of playing it.

And I think we're fortunate nowadays to have such a wide choice on the network that lets us do that. Because I remember back in the days it was only over one network at the motorway service stations and there was only over one charger at each station. So it was a bit more of a lottery.

Gary :

Do you think you're spending less now than you were if you were running one of your internal combustion engine cars that you used to have?

Bob Murphy :

Oh, way less. Way, way less. I've been really lucky over the years to take advantage of global free charging in Scotland. That has been an absolute blessing. But even with everything charging for charging now and putting a tariff on the charge posts, if I look back to the amount of money I was spending on petrol back in the days compared to what I'm spending on electricity now, it's far, far less. And it wasn't like the petrol cars were anything groundbreaking. It was like a 1.3 litre Ford car or a 1. 6 Nissan Almera. But the cost of the fuel was going through the roof. And yes, it's definitely a much more economical way to travel, to commute. And even based against the train prices, it's still cheaper for me to drive the car through Glasgow, park it for the day, pay for charging than it is to get a turn train to get peak times. So yes, it's really just a much, much more efficient economical situation.

Gary :

I want to start wrapping up now, but I want your opinion on something. I want to pick up on a comment I read from someone about charge speed. This came from Darren Cunningham on LinkedIn, who basically said that the issue he was encountering with public charging was that at a high-ish state of charge, sort of 55% or for example, with a cold battery that isn't warming up sufficiently between leaving home and arriving at the charger, he's getting around 30 kilowatt charging speed. But he's doing this on a Kempower charger that could be costing him 79 pence a kilowatt hour. In reality, he's not pulling anything like the top speed that he could. Plus it's taking him a lot longer to charge than he would have done had the speed been as high as the car could actually change. Do you have any thoughts on that kind of situation? Is there anything you've encountered yourself?

Bob Murphy :

Oh yeah, all the time, all the time. My Soul can apparently charge up to a maximum rate of 75 kilowatt. I've only ever seen that once. And that was in high summer on a warm day with a warm charger and a warm battery. So happiness is a warm battery and a warm charger because you can get the maximum energy flow through it. But yes, charging speeds are very much like internet speeds and you have to learn the vehicle and you have to understand how the battery management system works, how the charge point works, what the interaction, the interplay between the two of them are, so that you're not only getting the best bang for your buck. Because if you're going to an ultra high powered rapid charger that's charging you a premium for the convenience of speed, but you cannot take advantage of that, then why pay anything extra for it when a couple of miles down the road, there's maybe a 50 kilowatt charger at a third of the price that will give you the same amount of energy and the same amount of time for less money. So yeah, there's a wee bit of thinking involved in that kind of, that sort of environment. But yeah, it's one that I definitely come across myself, yeah.

Gary :

So you've definitely proven that with a little bit of forethought and the right infrastructure around you, you can actually run an electric vehicle without home charging and pay less than it would if you were running an internal combustion engine vehicle. So well done for doing that. Is there anything else you would like to tell the listeners about living without home charging?

Bob Murphy :

It's not the deal breaker that a lot of people present it as, it really isn't. I mean, if we think back to how we would use petrol or diesel vehicles, we'd never had home petrol stations. We'd always refuel on the go, you know, we'd refuel at the supermarket or a destination or things like that. The only difference between the two is that recharging can sometimes take a little bit more time. But if you factor that time into your kind of daily activities anyway, then it's not really that much of a hindrance, you know. But by the time I've parked my car at a rapid charger on the way home or something like that, and I've checked, you know, social media and I've checked emails and I've watched a few TikToks and I've had a bit of a laugh, I'm at 70% and ready to go for the next day. And you don't have to have the car 100% all the time. You don't have to have it at, you know, within spitting distance of a charge point, just use the thing as you would normally use it. And over time you'll adapt and it becomes an awful lot easier.

Gary :

Bob, Fantastic. Bob Murphy, thanks for your time. Appreciate it.

Gary :

Thanks very much.

Gary :

So there you have it. Living without a home charger. What are the barriers? What are the options? And how does that work in real life?

Now, I think it's important to put a lot of this in context. I regularly ask people if they think that public rapid charging is too expensive or not. And the answer is invariably yes.

And my follow up question is, how often do they search for cheaper charging when looking for somewhere to charge? And the answer is invariably never. And that's because at the moment people are more convenience based when it comes to public charging, especially for rapid and ultra rapid charging.

If they're on a journey up the motorway, they'd much rather pull into the service station and pay the going rate there than perhaps go off at the next junction and find a charge that might be 10 pence a kilowatt hour cheaper. Or even pull in at an MSA, motorway service area, and use the chargers that are there and available rather than the ones for which they can get a subscription that reduces their costs by up to 42%. Likewise, there are EV drivers who will park up on an AC charger overnight and pay the prevailing rate, whatever that may be, rather than shift their charging to a later point in the evening when overnight charge tariffs will kick in. Chargy, for example, have, as we've already mentioned, have an overnight rate of 39 pence a kilowatt hour or 11. 2 pence a mile. But that's only for charges between midnight and 7am. If you come home from work at 6pm, plug in and start charging immediately, your car will be using the day rate electricity for 6 hours before the night rate kicks in. This will obviously increase your average cost per mile. So Bob has proven that with a little thought and the chargers in the right place, you can get costs down to 12p or 14p a mile.

That's at or lower than the price you would pay for a diesel or petrol car. Of course, not all of the circumstances Bob talked about will apply to everybody. You might not have somewhere at work that you park up all day and pay 40 pence a kilowatt hour, for example, or your nearest and most convenient charger might be a rapid charger at 80 pence plus per kilowatt hour.

In that case your costs are going to be a lot higher. But thinking of what Bob has said, coupled with the points we raised last week about the different options available for living without a home charger, it does go some way towards proving that it doesn't always have to be radically more expensive and, under the right conditions, you can beat the cost of diesel or petrol.

I'd also like to point out that when I asked Bob to track his charging for the show, I had no idea how much he was paying for his charging. I was as surprised as you probably are to learn that 12p or 14p a mile is achievable without a great deal of effort. So what do you think? Could you do what Bob does and get the price down? Do you already do that? Can you beat 12p a mile on public charging? Let me know: Info@evmusings. com.

It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with your listeners.

A new paint has been developed that changes colour with temperature. A new paint developed by designer Joe Doucette changes colour based on temperature, thereby helping buildings stay cooler in summer and warmer in winter. This climate-adaptive paint, which is known as thermochromic paint, follows the same principle as those old 90s mood rings.

It can reduce energy costs by anything between 20 and 30%. If the temperature outside is below 25C or 77F, the building will be black. If it's above that temperature, it will turn white.

It's still undergoing testing but if successful, it could be licensed to paint manufacturers for widespread use. That's a great way to help reduce your bills, although it might be difficult to give directions to people. Yeah, we're in the third house on the right, the one with the white door.

Unless it's cold, in which case we're the one with the black door. I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show. It was put together this week with the help of Bob Murphy.

Just incidentally, Bob has a great interview with Greg on the Take It EV podcast. If you want to listen to that, I'll put a link in the show notes. If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages to pass on to me, I can be reached at info@evmusings.com. On the socials, I'm on bluesky at evmusings.bsky.social. I'm also on Instagram at evmusings where I post short videos and podcast extracts regularly. Why not follow me there?

Thanks to everyone who supports me through Patreon on a monthly basis and through Ko-fi. com on an ad hoc one. If you enjoyed this episode, why not buy me a coffee?

Go to ko-fi. com slash slash evmusings and you can do just that. k.o. dash f.i.dot com / evmusings. Takes Apple Pay too. Regular listeners will know about my two ebooks. So you've got electric and so you've got renewable. The 99p each are equivalent and you can get them on Amazon. Check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my regular EV Musings newsletter and associated articles.

Now I know you're probably driving or walking or jogging but if you can remember and you enjoy this episode, drop a review in iTunes please. It really helps me out. If you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you.

Why not let me know you've got to this point by messaging @musingsev.bsky.social with the words 'Apples and Oranges #ifyouknowyouknow' Nothing else.

Thanks as always to my co founder Simon. You know [ his past caught up with him recently playing a game of confessions with his wife. She asked him about his past life as Hertfordshire’s no 1 gummy bear dealer. He denied everything, of course. Said he wasn’t into anything more than just casual use.

Bob Murphy :

I'd always just buy a fiver here and there when I was out and about and that habit's continued.

Gary :

Thanks for listening. Bye!