One of the best perks of owning an electric car is charging it at home. It allows you to have a fully charged vehicle every morning and forget about charging stations as long as your daily commute and errands fit within the maximum range of your vehicle.
But can you actually run an electric vehicle without having access to a home charger? How does that work? Tesla Model 3 owner Mark Brown knows a thing or two about that, as he has never charged its EV at home since buying it a year ago
For starters, not having a home charger was not intentional; it just happened that he didn't plan to spend more than two years in the house he was living in when he bought the Model 3, so investing in a home charger was not a priority.
When he took delivery of his Tesla Model 3 in spring 2021, Mark made good use of the charging stations in and around the UK city of Manchester where he lives. At the time, public charging stations were empty most of the time and many of them offered free electricity.
Things have changed dramatically in one year: the public stations are almost always busy and charging is not free anymore. Quite the contrary, the cost of charging is constantly going up as the price of electricity increases.
Still, charging an EV remains much cheaper than refueling an internal combustion engine car. To find charging stations, Mark uses EV charging apps like PlugShare and Zap Map, which typically also show how busy a charging station is and how much it charges.
Speaking of costs, the Tesla Model 3 owner reveals that after 14 months and 14,000 miles of owning the car, he spent only £156.50 ($192) on charging. Of course, that's because he benefitted from six months of free Be.EV charging, free Supercharging, as well as free supermarket and gym charging.
Now that he has to pay to charge, the costs are still really low, averaging up to £10 a week ($12) for up to 200 miles of driving—he occasionally charges at some supermarkets where it's still free.
Check out the video for the lowdown on what it's like to own an EV without having access to a home charger, but don't think you can pull that off if you don't live in a city with a developed network of public stations.
