Welcome ​@Tommyg !

The name’s Blastoise186 and I’m one of the Forum Volunteers here. Nice to meet you!

This definitely seems like a tricky one and I think we can give this a go, but it may take a little time to figure out. I’ve got a call with the Forum Moderators shortly so I’ll see if I can let them know about this and chat with them about initial thoughts. You’re not in trouble though - quite the opposite - because this is one of those unique questions we absolutely love here.

Bear with us and we’ll see what we can do!

Thanks ​@Blastoise186 nice to meet you too. Glad I’m not in trouble! I look forward to seeing what ideas you come up with

​@Tommyg  do you know if any of the other people in your close are planning to get an ev ? Have you seen https://co-charger.com where you can rent out your charger. I realise you don’t have one yet but if you get on with the neighbours maybe you could get one installed somewhere in the road and organise a sharing arrangement ?

No worries!

Just got off the call with the Forum Moderators. They agree that this one is a good one but it needs a little bit more advice so we’re going to send this to a certain engineer to get his thoughts. He’s already chasing up another related question, so we’ll get these linked.

Hang in there for now - we definitely want to help figure this out but we also want to get this right.

We’ll keep you posted!

Hey ​@Tommyg, 

This is a really tricky one as my guess is that you don’t own the garage as property and that it’s a communal space that’s been allocated to you. Do you know if the garage is yours and that you hold the title for it? I think the primary thing we need to look at is what permissions do you have for installing at the garage/near your home. From there we can start to look at how the install would work and can offer advice. 

​@juliamc that’s a great share and I love the idea of a community coming together to share a charger to those who could be in this situation! If I look at my current case we have 8 spaces shared amongst a group of properties and this would work great for us if we had multiple EV’s. 

Keep the conversations coming and I can always take this away when we know more and ask internally to get a steer on how this could work 

I’d doubt that solar would be much help for charging an EV. Fine in summer but only if the car’s there while the sun shines, good for a top up though. However, have you seen this kind of thing ?  https://empowerenergy.co.uk/solar-car-park-canopies/ 

There must be millions of potential EV owners who can’t park/charge directly at their property and don’t even have a dedicated parking space.

Flat dwellers with included or seperatly rented garages, underground/communal parking for example.

And how about terraced house dwellers who park outside their property but can’t reasonably trail charging cables across the pavement and create a public trip hazard?
There are pavement mounted charging ‘bollards’ but they pose their own obstruction issues.
Maybe something sunken into the pavement edge with a hinged cover could be fitted? But that too would have potential issues in rain or snow.

At the moment the EV charging infrastructure, technology and equipment, (and thus supplier cost/incentive schemes), seem to be lagging behind the realities of how/where people live.

We didn’t have a charger at our house when we first bought it, we took it to a local car park and charged it there. That wasn’t particularly problematic. Now some public chargers are ‘rapid’ or ‘ultra rapid’ so the time spent waiting for a charge is much less than we had to put up with 5 years ago. Admittedly they are expensive compared to OVO’s 7p/kWh !

Thanks ​@Chris_OVO I’ll dig out the house paperwork when I get a chance and have a look.

Thanks ​@juliamc too, I’ll have a look at that co-charger and see if it’s something worth doing

You’re welcome ​@Tommyg. Please keep us updated