If you charge your electric car at home, you save up to 60 percent of the time you would otherwise spend with a classic car at gas stations! This is just one of the great advantages of electric cars.
This time we will check whether you need your own charging station for your electric car? In other words, how this question can be solved in another way.
This content is sponsored by evpolnilnice.si, who provide affordable and professional advice on the planning and installation of electric charging stations for cars.
Video: Do we really need our own charging station for an electric car?
Charging an electric car at home has many advantages. So we decided to highlight the most obvious ones!
- First time: It is much more convenient than stopping at a gas station several times a month. In this way, electric vehicle drivers save up to 60 percent of their fueling time compared to owners of classic cars. Drivers of classic cars make an average of 44 gas station stops per year. And there they spend 8 hours refueling the car.
- Second time: You can always have your fuel tank or battery charged and thus the maximum range of your vehicle. So your thought process is no longer about filling the tank with fuel.
- Third time: Energy – i.e. fuel – is extremely affordable. This is several times cheaper than at public charging stations and fast charging stations. And, of course, more than a few times cheaper than "classic" gasoline.
An interesting statistical fact
Owners of electric vehicles with a realistic range of an electric car of 400 kilometers (for example the Tesla Model 3, ID.4 with a larger battery) will be in more than 92 percent charged all the electricity in their own domestic electric charging station. Statistically speaking, they will only stop at a fast charging station, one-way fast charging station or "supercharger" 6 times a year. Of course, this figure changes if, for example, the car only has a range of 240 kilometers. In this case, you will charge the car outside your home 16 percent or 20 times a year.
So the bigger the electric car has a range, the less often you will charge it at "fast charging stations" outside your home.
For Slovenia, the range that an electric car must provide seems to be around 300 kilometers. We are not talking about the WLTP standard, where for a real range of 300 kilometers we find a number that is somewhere between 20 and 25 percent higher. So about 400 kilometers. With the real range of an electric car of 300 km, most of those Saturday trips that we like to take around Slovenia are covered. With this range, you will only use the fast charger 15 times a year on average. On it, you will only supply as much energy as you need to return home. In most cases, you will spend around 10 minutes for this charging.
This theory is also confirmed in our practice. After driving 13,000 kilometers, we record 1x monthly charging of the car at fast charging stations. During long journeys in Slovenia, we usually top up from 10 to 20 kWh, for which we spend between 5 and 15 minutes at a fast charging station. We always determine the amount of energy we need to reach our home charging station. And nothing more than that, because energy at fast charging stations is really expensive. We will discuss this in more detail in one of the following articles.
The data we provide are data from one of the most credible studies in the field of e-mobility that he has conducted Consumer Reports in cooperation with many state institutions and research organizations - consumerreports.org.
In our opinion, an electric car is a rational purchase decision only if you get your own charging station, which you have at home or which is available in the company parking lot. As a third option, there is also a shared charging station in a multi-apartment building, which can be shared by a maximum of five to seven users. This number of users on one connection is feasible only when the rules of use of this type of charging station are defined.
Despite the fact that the public infrastructure in Slovenia is currently good or among the better, it will become more and more strained as the number of electric cars increases. This is already noticeable during the peaks of "movements" and migrations, such as the summer holidays, as "columns" are already building up at fast charging stations. It is therefore almost essential to provide your electric car with its own charging station.
In the next article, we will focus on explaining how to get to a domestic filling station in an apartment block, since as much as 30 percent of all Slovenians live in such buildings.
You will be able to follow the series of video episodes on City Magazine Slovenija, info channel T2 and on all social channels of Jan Macarolo. Presumably every Sunday at 6 p.m. until 7/15, with a continuation in the autumn term.
Podcast: My First Electric Car
To follow the series, join Jan Macarolo in the Facebook community and other online channels where you will co-create this content.
LEAS – Owners of electric cars in Slovenia
Are you a new electric car owner?! Are you tempted or just interested in e-mobility? Thinking of buying a new electric car? Then join the LEAS FB group and read and share information about e-mobility. Together we are creating the largest community of electric car owners!
Supporters of the "My first electric car" project
Goodyear, T2, evpolnilnice.si, City Magazine Slovenia
