There's been great excitement in the local EV world lately. Public EV chargers have been installed in a few places around the district. I had to give one a go!

Ever since I bought the MG4, I have only ever charged it at home from a power point, using the “Trickle Charger”, so this time I had to borrow a charging lead from a friend with an EV. Then I had to download the app for the particular brand of charger, sign up and enter my credit card details, click on the QR code on the charger and plug in.

I was off and charging on what is considered to be a “slow charger”. However, the 7kw was over 4 x the speed of the trickle charger at home.

After a coffee and a stroll on the beach we returned an hour later with a 15% increase in our battery charge, (about 50km extra range) and my credit card $7.50 lighter.

Now that sort of charger would not be very good for a long trip, but very good for top-ups. On a trip, the fast chargers are a much better option.

Here is a quick run down on the type of chargers around.

AC (Alternating Current) Chargers

These are the trickle and slow chargers. A battery needs DC power and the electronic gadget called a rectifier is used to convert AC to DC (Direct Current) for the battery. EVs have their own small rectifier built into the car and it is the size of this rectifier that limits the speed of the charging.

However, the advantage of the AC chargers is that they can run directly off the mains power at home and on the street for public chargers. This makes them a lot cheaper. For the public AC chargers, you will need to bring your own “type 2” cable.

DC (Direct Current) Chargers

These are fast chargers, the sort that you would use when on a longer trip. The rectifier to create the DC power is built into the charger in the street and is MUCH bigger than those built into the car.

There are not as many of these chargers littered around the place because they are expensive, serious industrial installations, with chunky connections to the grid. But there are plenty on the main highways. In the case of the MG4, a public DC fast charger will charge from 10% to 80% (250km extra range) in about 35 minutes, which makes longer trips much more doable. Stopping every 250km for a half-hour break is probably what you would do anyway.

Meanwhile, at home, I am using the 1.6kw trickle charger with a timer on the MG app which only charges from 9:30am to 5pm when the solar panels are producing on a sunny day. This gives me free fuel (mostly).

I have got my eye on a new charger that tracks any excess solar power and diverts it to the car – to satisfy my obsession for home-grown, free fuel. More on that later.