Currently reading: What is the best home electric car charger?

With so much choice, it's hard to know which home charger is best value. Here's our guide to the best five

With the debate about public electric car charging infrastructure still raging and the demand for EVs becoming ever greater, spurred on by the ULEZ expansion and the introduction of clean air zones, it's often overlooked just how many motorists want to avoid the chaos and plug their EV in at home. 

Happily, this is becoming more of a priority – evident in the UK government's legislation that stipulates all new-build houses, as well as flats with parking for more than 10 cars, must have electric car charging facilities. 

According to Autocar's sibling title What Car?, there are currently around 400,000 home and workplace chargers available in the UK, with 80% of EV owners choosing to charge at their own abode. 

These figures were no doubt helped by the fact that the government would provide £350 towards the cost of having a charger fitted at home, but this is no longer available in quite the same way. To install a home charger now costs anything from around £400 – and can cost more than £1000 in some cases.

As well as different prices, they also charge at various speeds - anything from 3.6kW to 22kW. This, however, depends on whether your building has single-phase or three-phase power.

In the standard single-phase system that most residential properties have, you’ll be able to charge up to around 7kW. Properties with three-phase power can cope with a 22kW charger. 

Podpoint

To get the best bang for your buck, we'd recommend a 7kW charger, which will be able to charge your car overnight. For example, a Volkswagen ID 3 will take around 10 hours to charge at one.

With so many available on the market, however, which ones are the best for value, service, reliability and customer satisfaction? With findings from What Car?’s best home charger survey, let's break down the top five.

1. Pod Point

It's good news that Pod Point is one of the UK's largest providers of at-home EV chargers, because its chargers are easy to use, reliable and quite affordable to buy. Gaining the highest score for value, nine out of 10 chargers cost £750 or less overall.

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Pod Point scores well for service, too, with 98% of chargers installed in less than three months, and 85.7% of owners said they were very happy with their chargers in the What Car? satisfaction survey.

2. Hypervolt

Founded in 2018, Hypervolt offers chargers designed and built in the UK and they are available as stand-alone units or with fitting. The chargers tended to be pricier than average, with 35% of What Car?'s survey respondents paying more than £1000 for the unit and installation. Six in 10 paid more than £750.

However, Hypervolt scored the highest satisfaction rating of all brands in the survey – at 93% – thanks to prompt installation.

3. Myenergi

Myenergi has grown exponentially since it introduced itself to the UK market in 2017 with its Zappi charger – the first to be able to charge an EV using electricity gathered from solar panels.

Since then, its network has amassed 3000 Zappi chargers with an impressive satisfaction rating of 90%, while 85% of respondent's chargers were installed less than three months after ordering. However, high purchase and installation costs let it down slightly. Just under half (44%) paid between £750 and £1000, and 26% paid over £1000 for the system.

4. Easee

Norway-based Easee exports its chargers, which have been built to adhere to UK regulations. All units were fitted in less than three months, earning it a rating of 89% for customer satisfaction. In the experience of those who responded to the survey, the units were also quick to respond and easy to use.

Again, however, it let the side down when it came to purchase and installation cost, with more than half of the installations in What Car?'s charging survey costing between £750 and £1000, and 20% costing more than £1000. There are no controls on the pod itself, because customers use an app, which we found to be easy and intuitive to operate.

5. Rolec

Electrical equipment specialist Rolec has been designing and manufacturing EV chargers for over a decade, with experience alongside firms such as MG and the NHS. Cost was on this company's side, with a third of survey respondents paying between £200 and £500, while only 25% paid £750 to £1000. Almost all chargers were installed within three months but, when we tested it, it took five months longer than that.

The charger itself is controlled through a third-party app called Monta, which is clearly laid out and easy to use. The front fascia of the charger can also be customised to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

Jonathan Bryce

Jonathan Bryce
Title: Editorial Assistant

Jonathan is an editorial assistant working with Autocar. He has held this position since March 2024, having previously studied at the University of Glasgow before moving to London to become an editorial apprentice and pursue a career in motoring journalism. 

His role at work involves running Autocar's sister title Move Electric, which is most notably concerned with electric cars. His other roles include writing new and updating existing new car reviews, and appearing on Autocar's social media channels including Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

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ZPN Energy 27 August 2023
Readers should not be misled or doomed to slow chargers, British EV. Charger manufacturer ZPN Energy offers the worlds only Rapid Home EV charger that could charge your car in around an hour system doubles as home energy battery system so you can also guarantee lowest cost energy from grid or solar PV.

So this list is probably not the 'best' home chargers!

orrery 8 September 2023
Great I'm sure, but a home battery that can hold 80kWh to charge a modern EV in an hour would cost upwards of £30,000. My Hypervolt cost £750 and I only bother using it every few days. We'll eventually be using the EV as battery storage.
Peter Cavellini 26 August 2023

Ten hours ? , so, the scenario, your car has to be at by say 10pm hopefully ready to go at 8am, say you have an emergency, have to go out after 10pm, can you just unplug it?, i know nothing about EV cars I'm just looking for answers, the do's and don'ts of charging.

Bill the Lizard 26 August 2023

Ten hours assumes you're going from zero to full, so if you're doing two or three hundred miles a day that might be a problem. In the real world you're just topping up. Stick to off peak electricity, if you can get the tariff, and it costs peanuts.

Elvisisalive 26 August 2023

Autocar use to be the saviour of the UK motorist , now it seems that they have become a mouth piece for the Government.

What happened to the renowned independent journalist views.

This article highlights a complete lack of empathy for us now , £750 for a home charger - say it again that £750 , ( that's 4500 miles of driving in my diesel Euro 5 car)and then a hugely expensive, deprecating vehicle to boot. Why isn't Autocar standing up to protect the motorist it at least use its reputation and platform for sense.

EVs are simply too expensive, not fit for purpose and the infrastructure not sufficiently capable for every single motorist.

Come on Autocar wake up

gagaga 26 August 2023

The nudge unit are kind and generous with their grants.

As for this article - it's just junk.

"What is the best home electric car charger?"

Zero explaination of what to look for - what's good/bad, zero evidence they've done anything more than a quick cut and paste from a press release.  Testing?  They used to do that in the old days.

I've an EV on lease - the charger came 'free' with that, but was (of course) paid for via my taxes and energy bills through grants to the charger fitter and the lease co that paid the other half.

And right now there's that latest VW advert on television where the clever little lady has a new VW EV and the stupid man doesn't realise it's an EV.  This is 2023, believe it or not and they're still doing this nonsense.

I'm going back to bed, i've had enough.

catnip 27 August 2023
gagaga wrote:

And right now there's that latest VW advert on television where the clever little lady has a new VW EV and the stupid man doesn't realise it's an EV.  This is 2023, believe it or not and they're still doing this nonsense.

I'm going back to bed, i've had enough.

And one of the large motor chains that sells VWs in my local area is advertising offers on the ID range, describing the ID3 as a "city car". They really do take the motoring consumers for idiots. But maybe is some cases they're right.

orrery 8 September 2023
Actually, offers on an ev is big news. They've been able to sell every one they can make until now, with one year waiting lists. There are signs that the new EV market is starting to operate as a normal market should, with discounts and price reductions. With the large number of new models being introduced we're seeing competition start, which is why the 2nd hand prices are falling too.