EV charging stations map

The cost to recharge your electric vehicle (EV) will depend on the type of car you drive, the batteries your car has and who you buy the electricity from.

With some public charging points, you pay a yearly or monthly subscription, while others bill you on the amount of electricity you use during the charge – a pay-as-you-go model. Some charging points are actually free – especially those installed at an office or supermarket car park.

Generally, it will be cheaper to recharge your electric vehicle than it will be to refuel a petrol or diesel car.

For more details read our blog: How much does it cost to charge an electric car.

Some charge points in the network are free, but others you have to pay for. With our interactive map, you simply type in a place name or postcode and you will find out where all the EV charging points are across the UK network. When you click on the Charging Point icon you will see how many charging bays there are at the location, what kind of charger it has and how much it will cost.

There nearly 20,000 electric vehicle charging points in the UK – and that number is growing all the time. Our map will show you where you can find each one of those charging point locations.

Generally, there are three types of public charging point: the rapid charger, the fast charger and the slow charger. These are categorised by their power outputs, and therefore how fast they charge your electric vehicle. The higher the output, the faster you should be able to charge your car. Power is measured in kilowatts (kW).

Rapid charger

As the name suggests, rapid charging is the fastest way to charge an EV. Rapid AC chargers have outputs of 43kW and use a Type 2 connector. Rapid DC chargers have at least a 50kW output and are fitted with a CCS, CHAdeMo or Tesla Type 2 charger. Tesla Superchargers are rapid DC, too, and have a 120kW output. It should take between 30 and 80 minutes to charge your car to 80% at a rapid charger.

Fast charger

Most public charges have fast-charging capability. They tend to be between 7 and 22kW. Fast chargers have Type 1 or Type 2 sockets and it typically takes three to four hours to charge your car at one of these.

Slow charger

These chargers have a three-pin plug. Similar to the home charger many EV owners have installed in their house, it can take up to 10 hours to fully recharge EVs at one of these locations.

The good news for EV drivers is that all the latest charging points in the UK network all have the universal Type 2 socket. This is also known as the Mennekes connector, named after the company that first proposed them in 2009. This means you shouldn't have any problems connecting your EV to the charge point.

Most charging sockets in the UK use the more modern Type 2 socket, which has a flattened head and can charge at a faster rate than the older Type 1. Both Type 1 and Type 2 cables can be fitted with adapters so they can be connected to charging stations with either socket.

There is a range of suppliers who are responsible for growing and maintaining the EV charging network. Some of the biggest include Charge Your Car, e-carni, ecotricity, engenie, ESB, Genie Point, Instavolt, Pod Point, Polar (this is the biggest network and is owned by Chargemaster), Source London, Shell Recharge and Tesla.

A kilowatt hour (kWh) is the unit of energy often used to bill for electricity. Its value is equivalent to power in kilowatts multiplied by the time in hours, assuming the energy is transmitted at a constant rate.

A kWh price is the electric car equivalent of the price per litre you see at fuel stations when you fill up your car with petrol or diesel. A price per kWh allows you to see and compare how much it will cost to recharge your car’s battery at different car charging stations.

To work out how much it will cost to charge your electric car from empty to full, you take the unit price for the electricity and multiply it by the kWh capacity of your car’s battery.

Of course, you will probably pay less than this figure because your car won’t always be completely empty at the start of the charging process and you may not have the time to wait until the battery is completely full at the end of the time you have to charge it.

Just as different petrol and diesel cars use different amounts of fuel due to things like their weight and how they’re driven, in the same vein, different electric cars use different amounts of electricity.

The size of an electric car’s battery is rated by how many kWhs it can hold. For instance, a Tesla Model 3 Long Range has a 75 kWh battery – it can store a maximum of 75 kWhs of electric energy.

Electric cars come with an official range figure, but achieving it depends on how you drive and the external conditions (just as with the fuel consumption in a petrol or diesel car). Unlike combustion engine cars, which have a miles-per-gallon figure (MPG), the rate at which an electric car’s stored energy is used up as its driven is displayed as kWh/100mi – how many kWhs are used up to travel 100 miles.

So, if you started with a full battery and drove a Tesla Model 3 Long Range as efficiently as possible and achieved its maximum 348-mile range, it would use its electricity up at a rate of 21.55kwh/100mi. However, just like with petrol and diesel cars, driving quickly or erratically will increase the amount of energy used and decrease the car’s overall range.