Just had the home charging point installed for the Nissan Leaf. Not that I expect to make that much use of it. I can charge for free at work and at the local supermarket. So that’s weekdays and weekends covered. It will only be when I’m away from work for a few days and doing a lot of driving that I’ll need to use it. I benefitted from the OLEV subsidy on the installation, or more accurately Pod Point did because I suspect the cost is nowhere near the £900 headline figure. But they are still building out infra-structure and seem to be doing it well so I think it’s (tax) money well spent. Except the non-existent security on their wi-fi link. They need to fix that at some point as its trivially open to DOS attacks.
Charging cost away from home appears to have a bi-modal distribution. Either they are free, or they work out much closer per mile to the diesel I was putting in the Freelander. It will be interesting to see over time how this changes. I suspect Sainsbury’s will continue to be free, for a while, because the cost to them is low enough to be worth attracting the customers. After all, we’re early adopters which implies a higher disposable income. Not sure about the University. There’s currently 20 spaces and they are not at capacity yet. But it’s only a matter of time and as they install more chargers, they may decide to offset the cost by charging.
Leave a Reply