Electric Car Beginners Guide (kW/kWh/Costs etc) 

The whiteboard of truth is back😅 good video for anyone new to EV world, def one to bookmark.

Great content. Well presented. Too many EV channels nowadays are just "show and tell" or "whinge about something". You actually INFORM us.

I'm just about to jump across to an EV. The best explanation I've heard about charging speed was to imagine the charging like a car park. When it's empty it's easy to find a space, but as it gets fuller it takes longer to find the empty spaces.

One thing we need to mention to beginners, and something that very much tripped me up. Is about those expensive fast chargers compared with cheap home charging. You will hear folk talk about something called range anxiety, but in reality it is usually a sort of economics anxiety. In short, once you get your head round the fact that a lot of your journeys are very cheap, you start to realise that it does not matter that longer journeys cost a lot more because you used a pricey fast charger. Your monthly fuel bill will still be cheap.

Thank you ever so much for your time for this video..... I am purchasing my first used EV. You've explained it thoroughly. It makes more sense on how it works ......as videos of drivers driving them and speaking on miles per KW. Thank you ever so much.......❤❤

The best analogy of charging I have seen was i have seen was imagine your battery was a 50 gallon drum that you are filling with a fire hose but you can't spill any water so as you approach the top of the barrel you have too restrict the flow down to a trickle

Great way to go over the basics. It is sometimes difficult to remember how it was to not know about EVs.

Thank you thank you thank you! Clearly laying out the difference between kW and kWh!! Like calling Concrete "Cement!", or Bread "flour." They are different units.

Before I went electric I checked RU-vid channels for information. I was concerned mainly about a good battery, and waited until there was improvement. I did find this channel. Not everything here relates to the US, but there is good general information here. In 2016 I got a 2014 Leaf after my ICE vehicle went to the junkyard. I have done things with it I was told couldn't be done. Another concern was traveling. I didn't care how long it took, as long I got there. I took a non-technical approach. I got Plug Share for charging and Leaf Spy to check on the car. Be informed. This channel is helpful.

Great clip, i will forward this to all those people who ask me why it takes so long to fill my electric car, even if its ready to drive away before i am back from a quick toilet break 😮,

Elon Musk once used the an brilliant analogy comparing battery charging to parking a car, he said when the car park is empty it's easy for you to find a parking space but as the car park get near to full, you have drive around and around to find a space and it's the same for electrons trying to find a space to attach too

Your next persona might well be KwH Man after this video. Well explained! Thanks for the upload. Just joined as a Member (at last). 😊

Great to see no nonsense practical advice from a 'relatable' presenter who has no hidden agenda.

In terms of charging etiquette, there's only one situation where you should be obliged to move your car from a rapid. If your charge is racing along, by all means continue. If your charge has slowed to a crawl, but there are other units available, feel free to continue If your charge has slowed to a crawl, all units are being used, but nobody is waiting, feel free to continue. If however, your charge has slowed to a crawl, no other units are available AND there are people waiting, unplug and move on. Obviously this is no steadfast rule and you don't have to, but let it be known if you don't move, people are probably gonna call you a selfish tosser.

Loved it. Just to had that on my country we use kWh/Km for eficiency

I’m an ice driver at present but watched a Corsa E driver charging on a 40kw Gridserve charger today. Opposite him were twelve 350 kw Gridserve chargers - all working and none in use. Suggests that there are many EV drivers that need to watch something like this!

Great info as ever. Had an event for a couple of years and still learning from you.

Great, clear information.

thank you for this - I can share this with others when asked - also he is a real RU-vidr now with sponsorships - well done

Great info thanks

Excellent video. I learnt a few new things there.

Excellent video. I wish it had been around when I started my EV journey 4 years ago. I’ll be forwarding this to my sister who has just got her first EV.

One tip I can offer is only charge to what you need when you're away from home, always add a 20% buffer in case of any issues. If you were driving a petrol car and were having to use a motorway station ie expensive fuel, you would only fill up with enough to get you home.

Great info. Thanks.

Great video!! ⚡️👍

I'm so glad that someone has taken the time to explain these things, although I can't afford an electric vehicle or access to off road parking for home charging and the infrastructure in this area just isn't there, (one working charge point in the town where I live), but it's nice to know, I will be pushing up the daisies by the time we go fully electric I am going to ask a stupid question as someone who has never owned an electric vehicle, but how do I know how much a kilowatt hour costs on a charger? I will admit to being a dum dum, or as another RU-vidr called me, a cabbage, I don't use or know how to use a technical phone, I still use a Nokia, people say that technical phones tell you is that the only way I can find this information out?

Excellent explanation. Thanks for posting.

Excellent, concise explanation. Thank you, young man.

Great stuff! Love your accent! I sell PV and I can't believe, how many people have problems understanding the difference between kW and kWh. I usually give them the analogy of hp and liters in a petrol tank. And that what many are doing, equals to saying "My car uses 150hp per 100km.".

Brilliant video. Answered a lot of my questions

Excellent video for new comers to the EV club. Made it a simple to understand one. Well done Andy!

Great and well explained video.

Excellent video.

I prefer to use the term 'Unit' instead of kWh. It helps avoid the confusion between kW and kWh. 1 Unit (of electricity) = 1 kWh.

I thought I knew what I needed but you taught me a lot in this video, you explained everything simply and easily well done🎉

Agreed - great instructional video for a newbie

The 7.5p is for 4 hours so 28 kwh in the battery and the rest at a higher rate. Pre-conditioning the battery also takes energy from the battery thus reducing your range. In your example rapid charging to 80% would mean only charging to 40 kwh capacity reducing the range by 40 miles

Thanks good information.

most excellent

Yes that was very well explained. Bob from Kent England.😊

Very good video Andy. I will be sharing it with family who are thinking of going EV but need a better explanation of charging than I have been able to give them.

Great thanks

It never hurts to go over the basics and there is always some little nugget in there, as a little take away.

Summary * kW = the rate at which energy is delivered * kWh = the total amount of energy delivered / held in a battery * Cost per kwh x the number of kwh delivered = total cost * Fast chargers cost more than charging at home * Miles per kWh is the inverse of kwh (or wh) per mile. * Electric cars charge fastest between about 5% and 60% full and slow down until full * Electric cars will only charge as fast as the car can accept OR the charger can deliver - (whichever is slowest)

Great video, this kind of information helpd when I am explaining it to people who ask me about my EV experiance. One thing I have also noticed is that the predicted distiance at teh end of each charge on my home charger is different, even when I charge to 100%, as it is with ICE cars. But you don't notice as much. I have an E208 and 100% charge can be anything between 186 and 195. I have solar and when it states it has had 100% charge over night, if I leave it plugged in, which is a very slow charge, it can get up to 205 miles. I switched last August and have no regrets. Keep them coming.

Really useful for a first time buyer I know so many thanks. Could you do/have you done an idiot's guide to installing a home charger in different types of houses. Many people have or buy homes that are not compatible with home charging so it would really help.

informed video

Liking the questions from beginners on here. Possibly the basis for more videos?

It's a pity manufacturers don't communicate more about the charging curves to the customers. At VW we receive so many customer complaints about people that are disappointed with the charging power. The brands only display the max power but never the necessary conditions.

Pints for £3.96? Direct me to your local!... and thanks for the jargon breakdown

Excellent video for people new to EV's. I have one question off the back of it - apart from charging speed, is there any other benefit of pre conditioning your battery before using a rapid DC charger i.e. reduced charging losses? If the only benefit is speed, I'm quite happy to not use any additional energy heating the battery up to reduce the amount that I need to charge up by - especially with the cost of some DC chargers!!

A figure that interests me is that one litre of Diesel is roughly 10kWh. This allows one to calculate some great efficiency figures; e.g. 7.5p/kWh (Octopus Energy, the best Utility Co. to ever!) = 75p/litre (compare to £1.50 for Diesel) and at 4 miles/kWh, this gives 40 miles per 10kWh roughly equal to (x4.55l/gallon) 182 miles per gallon. When people cannot comprehend the efficiency of EVs, these numbers help (EVs are around 90% efficient compared to a Diesel engine's approx. 30%) but this makes sense - far less noise, no waste heat and regen braking.

I would prefer we use Mega Joules instead of kWh. With those units an EV would do about 1 mile per MJ if you are not driving for economy. Or if you are European, 0.625 MJ per kilometre. No other reason. I think it would make the mental arithmetic of live journey planning en-route a bit easier. I'll get my coat ...

I like to explain the last 20% slow down to new EV owners like this. You are waiting to fill up your ICE, the car in front stops filling, goes into shop.. But rather than paying & moving does their weekly shop before paying for the fuel. How does that make you feel....

i noticed tv energy usage given in kWh/1000h in the shops. quite the detour to get to average watts.

More people need to pay attention to power and energy units. Number of people that use units interchangeably is ridiculous.

Off topic, but have you seen how cheap new nissan leafs are on autotrader? I know they're not the best but £16k!!!!!

Can you do a chat about the different home chargers available? And what to do whilst you wait for a 7kW charger? What are Granny Chargers? Etc, thank you

Reliable home charger - My Zappi is letting me down big time. Engineer coming out soon, I'll see how that goes.

I was going to ask what's the best product to shave my ⚽🏈

Time for tea brb

mmmm you mention being given a charger best suited to your particular vehicle. What happens if you change the model or make of car does this mean yet another charger at a £1000 potentially?

I can charge at 7wk or.. half that I think on my charger (slowly) I don't know what has more losses, ie is it more because it gets hot going at 7 or more because the the charger is on longer if I have it on slow? Make sense?

Plus battery is 400v domestic supply is 240v

Can anyone please tell me what apps or charge cards I need for travelling from Scotland to England? We haven’t driven our EV much in England so a bit anxious we gonna get stuck due to not having correct payment systems in place! Any help would be amazing!

Its a shame this is still a relatively technical business but wider adoption and standardised charging stations should make the majority of charging work just fine at any public charger without having to do the maths!

As someone from the rest of europe I don't really get the Miles per KW to measure efficiency. And it's not because of using miles instead of Km, it's because on most ads, dealerships and so one the metric used is the opposite idea: KW per 100Km. that makes it easier to understand the potential range and to compare between cars because every mile might be different(slopes, highways and so one) but having an average of 100 avoids that bias.

We want 'Arry!

Quarter of a pint? I wish. My local is over a fiver.

Hi EVM, On charging speeds: Most home charges are 7KW, then there is Fast and Rapid and Granny (of coarse) what are these? Does the slow charging from about 80% to 100% affect all charger types?

Q. If you get Smart Home Charge to install based on your current EV, if you change it a few years down the line could the charger be un or less compatible with the new car meaning a change of home charger?

Maybe instead of using water as analogy for kw and kwh, it would have been better to use petrol or diesel?

Cheers Andy

However if I used 100 Amps at 400 Volts what would that be in 30 mins?

As a sit 'on fence' can I ask a question.....did you all buy an ev before or after all the ev fires that have been in tv or paper and how did you feel about your ev ? Did you tell your house insurer if charging around your house ? And if so how much did it increase ? just curious thanks.

Not only Europe there Andy basically the rest of the world besides the UK & US and I'm sure you have international viewers outside the European region such as myself. I use Wh/km as I learned from Bjorn and that is the better way in my opinion not just changing mpg to a mpkWh. The kWh/100km is more like L/100km for the countries outside the US/UK. I will admit much of this is very good, don't the UK have a EV association of any sort who do education for dealers/owners/other stakeholders?? I watched a Model 3 owner on a 50kW fast charger fill it to 100% and the 80-100% took as long as 10-80%, utterly ridiculous. I can see in future Police getting called to a incident let's call it at a charging station, they'll be someone there with a black eye or fat lip or some other thing with their car at 100% and someone else there who literally snapped. Well in the US there was an incident at a Supercharger let's just say it was abit more than a black eye or fat lip as you can imagine thanks to their 2nd Amendment lunacy. Out of Spec has shown actually the fastest way to a destination is charging just enough to reach the next charger and arriving with a low SoC typically almost 0% and charging to anywhere from 40-60% approx not sitting there for over an hour waiting to get to the all important(to the driver) 100% because their mindset is stuck in fossil world.

I would kill for a sensible EV like that Seat Mii, some grand cheaper than the needlessly posh VW eUP.

watt hours/mile seems a pretty silly metric in my opinion.

I’d love a small EV but can’t charge at home and the impression of public charging costs being extortionate doesn’t really make it a viable option.

Kw per KwHR. Why that’s a “per hour”. 1/hr. It’s inverted time. And it’s absolutely ridiculous.

Just filled my ev with a hosepipe, it didn’t like it

I hope this isn't too northern.

Hello mate

😂

Is this right ? To get a mpg figure out of your EV, take you miles per kilo watt figure (ie 4 as per your example) and x that figure by 40 to get an electric mpg (ie 160mpg) ??

Sorry but you reversers the explanation you should have had kWh in the left column and kw in the right coulumn in the tight the word you said are true but you are wrong in your presentation 21kwh is not correct it got 21kw of electricity at 7kwh after 3 hours

Sorry I think you're overthinking this

Electric Vehicle. Abbr EV. Pronunciation Eee-Vee. Description. Mobile Firebomb

Why are you Electric Vankers so bloody dull?

lets face it the EV market is dead ( thats proven by how low the second hand values are) they cost more to run that Petrol/diesel and they are worthless after 7 years. Snake oil?

Top tip, if you dont have a home charger, get a car with a reasonable range eg 150-200 miles. If you get one with 120 or less, and your work commute is 20-30 miles, you will be the guy who is at the charger trying to get it to full charge just to not keep returning to the charger all the time - especially in winter when your range could be less than 100. Also, having a car with a faster AC charge means you can get much more quicker from a non rapid charger

great info thank you