BENEFITS
of Home Charging
BENEFITS
of Home Charging
Even as electric vehicles are growing in popularity, more owners are choosing to install their own electric vehicle home charging stations. The benefits of driving electric vehicles are well-known. From cost savings to less climate damage, people who drive electric cars love them because they are an amazing piece of technology.
However, in spite of its many advantages, many electric car owners are still on the fence about getting their own EV charging stations at home –preferring to use the chargers installed in public locations instead.
If you’re currently looking to buy and install your own EV charger station at home, but haven’t quite decided yet, this post will highlight the reasons why owning an at-home EV charger station is a smart idea.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the market:
● 8 out of 10 times, electric cars are charged at home because it’s just easier
● China currently has the highest number of charging stations in the world –about 210,000
● New and advanced battery technologies are driving the adoption of private electric car charging stations –the pandemic led to a rise in the number of private and semi-privately owned EV charger stations
● The number of home EV chargers is still small, but it’s growing rapidly
● EV batteries are expected to last longer, cost cheaper and have better mileages
● Governments across the globe are encouraging private or at-home electric car battery charging stations by o ering tax incentives, rebates, preferential policies and subsidized EV charger installation costs
Although these sound good, you’re probably wondering how installing an EV charger in your house helps you. Well, the reality is there’s tons of benefits to having your own private charging station. Let’s examine those benefits.
Imagine this scenario: You’re already running late for a meeting, but your battery is running low. So you head to a charging station nearby with the last juice on your battery only to find that there’s a queue of EV cars waiting their turns and no vacant slot.
Then you check the time and see you have to rush. So you park your car, hail an Uber, and hope that your vehicle is there by the time you get back. Sounds stressful right?
Well, you probably don’t know this, but scenarios like this happen more often than you can imagine. People get stranded on the road because they either forgot to charge their cars or couldn’t get to a charger on time.
Yet, an EV charger at home would have solved that problem. All they’d have had to do was plug the charger and allowed the car to charge overnight. In the morning, they can just head out without worrying about a low battery, missing appointments, or being stranded on the road. In other words, they can start the day with 100% charge and ready to go!
If reliability and convenience matter to you, then you should install a home car charging station at home.
If you need to juice up your vehicle fast, public charging stations aren’t ideal for this. This is because they are typically Level 1 or Level 2 chargers.
While some public charging stations now have some ultrafast or superchargers
–Tesla, for example, the reality is the average public EV charger takes 8+ hours to
fully charge your vehicle (Levels 1 & 2 chargers typically take 6-16 hours to charge EVs fully).
Therefore, if you need to charge and dash, you need faster chargers, and a home unit is your best option in this instance.
One of the biggest barriers hindering the rapid adoption and installation of fast EV chargers is the initial setup cost. But, this costs is nothing compared to the long term rewards.
Fast chargers and superchargers only require 15-30 minutes for a full charge. If your time means a lot to you, this is a great investment as it saves you a lot of time. It eliminates the need to wait for hours just to get your car charged to a reasonable level.
To put this into perspective, it takes about 5-7 minutes to fill up the gas tank of a fossil fuel-powered vehicle. EV charging stations and their chargers are likely to soon catch up with this speed for a full charge, thanks to rapidly advancing battery technology.
If you live in cities or states like California where EV adoption is high, having an EV
charger installed in your home will likely increase your property’s value.
So if you’re a property developer or a homeowner who just wants to sell your home in these states or cities, make sure to add an EV charging station. You’ll get more money for the property.
EV car users understand the home charging is fast, super-convenient, and ultimately cheaper.
Climate change is real –that’s not even arguable anymore. If you value your future and want to leave a habitable earth for your kids, then low or zero-emission vehicles are a necessity.
A home charging station further reduces any form of emissions in the sense that you minimize energy consumption when you charge your car at home, particularly during o -peak periods.
Energy demand during peak periods means higher utilization of fossil fuels, which in turn, add more co2 to the environment. So when you choose to charge your car at night, when there’s little or no demand, you’re minimizing your carbon footprint indirectly.
