Home and work installations

These costs are, of course, mitigated on private land. Charging points, either post or wall-mounted, can be installed outside the home for anything between £500 and £1,000, although Siemens director of electromobility Philip Skipper says this is “surprisingly expensive” and predicts that the market rate must drop substantially.

Depots too can expect to pay between £500 and £1,000, particularly if committed by policy to using specific contractors.

A DC charging post – which can recharge a vehicle from zero to full in around 30 minutes – costs £20,000-£30,000.

Some DC charging posts are appearing around the country and, although there is a debate as to whether such rapid charging will degrade batteries in the long term, most commentators think that the facility and flexibility it will provide motorists and fleets with will nonetheless make it an essential part of the purchaser’s wish-list.

Billing is the great unknown

The big unknown with EV charging is how users will pay. The market has been distorted by the Government’s Plugged-in Places funding scheme, which requires the energy for charging to be given freely to motorists for a specific period of time.

Clearly free charging cannot last. However, a fragmented picture is emerging of how companies intend to track and bill motorists.

On one hand is the subscription model. Chargemaster’s Polar scheme will see home charging facilities alongside 4,000 posts in public places.
It will install a home charge point, and give the user access to its public sites where their RFID-enabled account can be charged 95p each time they charge; the subscription fee is £24.50 a month.

Other suppliers are less enamoured of the subscription approach, arguing that users will want EV charging to be like petrol stations: pull into any forecourt you like and pay as you go.

“We think it has to be an open source system,” says Taylor Haw at Elektromotive, who predicts the company will go to an easy pay-to-use scheme.

He points out that the subject is complicated by the rules governing the sale of electricity, which requires licences to resell energy at a profit.
Hence a car park could currently charge for the parking space but not for the electricity drawn down while parked.

APT Technologies will be offering parking in conjunction with charging through sister company APT Skidata. Skidata manages numerous public car parks such as at Heathrow airport.

The plan is that motorists would get a barcoded ticket on entry and can use that barcode to both activate the EV charger and pay for their stay and their electricity at the end.

Home or work?

The dynamics of home charging for business users – and where in fact people will choose to charge – is still largely unexplored territory. The industry has come to agreement on the fact that most charging will take place either on a private driveway or garage, or at work.

Only opportunistic charging will occur while out and about. An employee reclaiming the expense of charging is not currently seen as claiming a benefit in kind.

However, collecting the data necessary to reimburse employees could be complex as their home tariffs will differ, as will their places for charging.

Siemens’ Skipper says the solution is a dedicated meter which will collect charging data for the employer.