Electricians Blog

What Are The 3 Types Of EV Charging?

If getting to grips with electric vehicles wasn’t complicated enough, drivers also need to make sure that they understand the different types of charging points. But don’t worry, this might not be as complicated as you first think. There are three types of EV charging; rapid, slow and fast; let’s take a look at these in a little more detail.

Rapid Charging

If you are travelling along one of the major routes in the UK or have made a stop off at a motorway service station, then the chances are that you will stumble upon a rapid charging station. This is the quickest way to give your car’s battery a boost and in some cases, you could get up to an 80% charge in as little as twenty minutes! That being said, a 50kW electrical vehicle would typically need around an hour hooked up to a rapid charger to get a decent charge.

This speedy charging is thanks to an alternating current which is much higher-powered than other types of charger. However, for the privilege, drivers will need to be willing to part with more cash. Because of the high power of these chargers, once the charge reaches 80%, the power dwindles quite noticeably. But this is to protect the battery and give it a longer life.

Furthermore, you must keep in mind that your vehicle must be compatible with rapid charging in order to be able to make use of these stations. Using a tethered cable, drivers have the following options depending on their car type:

50kW DC charging using one of two connections
100kW ultra-rapid DC charging using one of two different connection types
43kW rapid AC charging using a single connection type

Fast Charging

Fast charging stations are located around the country and provide one of two types of charge for your EV. This is either 7kW or 22kW. The former may take around six hours to fully charge a 50kW vehicle whereas the latter could do the same in as little as one hour.

You’ll typically find fast chargers in locations where cars will spend longer amounts of time. Perhaps in a leisure centre or a public car park. You will find that most of these chargers are untethered so you will need to make sure that you have your charging cable with you at all times. However, there are some tethered fast chargers around, typically you might find these where businesses have made an installation for their employees.

Slow Charging

Slow charging units run at around 3kW and are designed to charge the cars much more slowly than the other types. In some cases, you could expect the car to be fully charged within six hours but at the other extreme, you may have to wait as long as 12 hours; this vastly depends on the car model. If you are considering installing a car charger at home, it is most likely that you would use this method. What’s more, there are a lot of slow chargers being used in workplaces. However, you’ll find that many of these are now outdated as they were installed back in the early days of the EV.

These systems can operate on a typical three pin connection but for the most part, installers would recommend using one of the other three types of connectors which include two different types of AC connector or a commando connector.

In our next article, we will find out, ‘How do I find electric car charging stations (UK)?’