[gary wyatt-williams]

Keep up with the times lads, EV charger manufactures are, in my opinion, getting way out of touch with today’s EV buyers, and missing out on a good revenue stream, most of the future buyers won’t be EV nerds (like me) they will be joe average, they will be getting cars like the MG, considerably cheaper than the elitist tesla/ipace/taycan brigade, and the chargers they make need to follow suit, they wont care about the flashy gimmicks, fancy WIFI LED displays showing WAYYY too much information, they are not going to be impressed, knowing they are able too sit in their armchair, with a smart phone, telling them how the energy is being generated.. all they want is to plug in at night and know it will be fully charged in the morning..
The grant has already dropped from £500 TO £350 and will probably cease to exist in a year or so, and as they have to be smart to comply for the grant, the cheapest is already way past £450.. chuck in installation costs of at least £250 and that’s if theres nothing dodgy with the house electrics that then needs upgrading, and your well on your way to a grand… well odds are, that joe average is going to just stick with plugging in the granny lead, which is great for the occasional charge.. but not for regular charging over long periods.. im an electrician, trust me.. melted sockets that need the granny charger prised out with a crowbar are getting pretty common..
Heres an idea, a charger, with no frills, bells & whistles, a type A rcd built in with a type 2 connector.. don’t tell me they cant knock one of those bad boys up for more than £200,, yeah you wont make big bucks per unit, but the quantity sales will only go one way.. through the roof, hell, we could be looking at installs for close on £400 quid, well within most peoples reach.. and making it worth while for the sparky to actually bother turning up...
gary

 

[husoi]

I'm sure you meant from 5,000 to 3,500 grant

The charger you are talking about is what Rolec had at first, before the government played the nanny card and made them to include the smart A$£se crap.
I won't change the one I have that is made exactly as you say, the RCD near the mains, another one inside the charger and the cable with a plug.
That is all you will need

 

[gary wyatt-williams]

I'm sure you meant from 5,000 to 3,500 grant

The charger you are talking about is what Rolec had at first, before the government played the nanny card and made them to include the smart A$£se crap.
I won't change the one I have that is made exactly as you say, the RCD near the mains, another one inside the charger and the cable with a plug.
That is all you will need

Hi Husoi, nah.. im talking about the grant to get a charger installed down to £350 since april..
gary

 

[andyswarbs]

I consider a decent charger as a good investment, especially given the amount of monet EVs cost.

The first priority for a charger is to do its job AND to do it reliably. Cheap chargers have been known to fail on both those counts. You are however right that bells & whistles will be ignored by most customers (as with most technologies). [I am still helping my wife use ALT-TAB to switch windows on her laptop (otherwise she is pretty sophisticated to be fair.]

Away from the charger and in the car, my Kona can be tweaked to take power at three different rates fast slow and turgid (my names), the idea being to protect the power supply from blowing. But that means the customer second guessing what works and what does not. If they get it too much power a circuit may be tripped, or worse! If they manually slow charging rate down they may have to wait too much for a car to charge.

In the end only a charger can, and should, do this job properly. A good charger is responsible for ensuring that neither your home nor your car is not overloaded and that your car charges in the timescale you ask for.. On the latter point, my Kona (sorry that's my only experience) has a scheduler so it will charge between the hours I request (eg midnight to 7am.)

As the old adage goes, "well begun is half done" or as an EV driver might put it
"properly charged at home means a happy jouorney."