How to find and use a public charging point
Charging your electric van is essential to keep your business moving during the working day. We look at everything from the best public charge points to connectors and wallboxes
If you’re a business owner considering your carbon footprint, then the type of van you run can make a huge impact. Electric or plug-in hybrid vans are well-suited to firms operating in big cities, urban environments or over short distances, and those green credentials can be boosted further by choosing a renewable energy provider, too.
But, before you buy an electric van, it’s crucial to think about how and where you’ll charge it. In the third of our four-part guide to electric vans, we examine everything you need to know about keeping your vehicle powered up.
Where to charge
For those who plan to top up once a day, it’ll likely be most convenient and cost-effective to recharge overnight, either at the workplace or at home. Either way, it’s worth investing in a wallbox charger (more on these on page 19), which significantly cuts the time it takes to charge compared with a standard three-pin domestic socket.
However, if you’re covering big mileages during the day, you’ll likely need to use a public charging point. Big city environments are generally well served for charging stations, and many electric vans come with a sat-nav database to point you to the nearest one.
Two more useful resources come in the form of Zap-Map and Open Charge Map. Available as a smartphone app or online, these help you locate public chargers, indicate whether they’re available and operational, and show how much charging will cost. It’s worth noting that charging at public points costs more than at home (around 20p-40p per kWh against 14p per kWh on an average domestic tariff ), but public stations’ rapid charging capabilities cut the time it takes to refill the battery.
Next week, in the final part of this series, we’ll explore the future of electric vans, and what the world of last-mile deliveries may look like in the years to come.