What name would you like to appear in your review?
Ron Mackintosh
What is the make & model of your charging unit?
bp pulse home charger 7
What year did you have your charging unit installed?
2021
Which company installed it and would you recommend them?
bp installed it, via 3rd party contractors. The installation itself (after lengthy paperwork and electrical requirement delays) was very quick itself, taking no more than 3 hours. The charger has been very reliable and simple to use but the installation process was painful to say the least!
How much did you pay for your unit and installation?
£599.
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Why did you purchase this particular unit?
We had very little knowledge of what types of chargers (or indeed suppliers) your could use as this was our first EV. The main reason we bought this particular unit was that it was recommended by MINI as their preferred partner and there was an additional discount of £100 from bp for going via a referral.
There were two home charger options available from BP for our needs – a charger with tethered type 2 cable or without. We had no need for a fully ‘smart charger’ with programmable times of the day for charging etc, so a simple, reliable device was key.
Our charging point is off the road on a private drive in a quiet area, so we felt that having a charging cable connected would be less hassle than having to uncoil the cable from the car and repack every time we wanted to use the charger. In a town or city location, we would have probably ordered the untethered version.
List 3 or more points that you like about the charging unit.
- Tethered cable means you just plug-in and charge
- Always available/ready
- Simple and reliable.
List 3 or more points that you don’t like about the charging unit.
- Being white with a blue cable it is quite visible
- The tethered cable gets dirty on wet days/nights and so your hands get dirty winding the cable back up again
You cannot lock the cable into the charger.
Outline any faults you have experienced with the unit.
No faults experienced in 11 months of use.
Provide your overall rating for the charging unit.
Tell us about your home charging routine.
We have a MINI Electric with a range of about 100 miles with the car used for short journeys in the main. The car will be used for between 100 and 300 miles a week depending on needs (and this year depending on Covid lockdowns). We typically use the charger 1-3 times a week, normally at night to go from say 30% charge to 100% charge, although we will sometimes plug it in for an hour or so during the day to get a boost if needed.
We have found it very useful to plug the car in at night in freezing weather, so that we can set the pre-heat timer to warm the car up in the morning without using battery charge. We did this too in the peak summer to set the air-conditioning on and cool the car. With a small battery range this can make a useful difference to the day.
If you were buying a new charging unit now, what would you buy and why?
For me it would depend upon the cost of charger for what you get for it. Unless you need sophisticated smart technology, I would again choose a simple charger like the bp charger. I am not really aware of the best smart chargers available at the moment but have heard good things about Pod Point.
Tell us about your electricity provider and tariff. Would you recommend them?
We use British Gas on a dual-fuel fixed tariff. We don’t use a specific EV-overnight tariff because we have a large family where the energy use is mainly throughout the day for the washing machine and tumble dryer, with very little energy used after 9pm, meaning that we would not get the benefits from an Economy 7-type EV tariff. British Gas are reliable. They aren’t necessarily the cheapest but overall we get a good service for a decent rate. We pay 17.6pence per kWh and on average we spend £30 to charge our EV.
Are you part of a charger-sharing scheme for those who don’t have their own charger?
No.
*library image used.
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