Here is a breakdown of the most common public chargers in the UK, being able to spot the old generation ones from the new ones can be useful on the ground so I found myself compiling a list for reference.
As a quick rule you can see all the old fast chargers in the top row feature the notorious emergency stop red button, no new charger is plagued by such a concept that telegraphs the likelihood of such malfunction that will require a actual big red physical button, thankfully we are passed that stage now and the stories of opportunistic strangers stoping sessions on a whim are a thing of early adopter legend.
Before moving on to giving some detail on all the chargers below its worth noting a full list of chargers is featured in the evmetrics app (macOS, iOS, tvOS) https://www.evmetrics.co.uk/app I only include here the most common ones in the UK.
The list :
Starting from the left we have the old Polar/Chargemaster/Pulse 7kw charging pole, you can still buy it for roundabout £2k but the manufacturer ChargePoint has long moved on no longer making them, they were installed in large numbers across the UK forecourts in the last 10 years by defunct CYC/Polar, low reliability, as slow as possible, i’ve never seen one actually do 7k, most do half that at best, not going to be missed.
Alongside it is the ubiquitous Alfen EVE which again was installed in large numbers by councils, MER, Hubsta to name a few, reasonably cheap at around £2k again and reliable the only problem is the flimsy flaps almost always get broken and most chargers do 7kW as opposed to the maximum 22kW possible with this charger.
In the new section underneath we have the small footprint modern equivalents the Chargepoint CPF50 which is similarly priced and can go up to 50kW and then the very capable Kempower Satellite that can be installed with up to 400kW capacity (separate battery cabinet)
Moving on to the Tesla section on the top we have the V3 Tesla Supercharger which tops at 250kW, underneath the newer V4 Tesla Supercharger with speeds up to 350kW and a small screen/payment terminal on the side which the older charger did not have.
Immediately related we have the absolutely ancient Polar/BP chargemaster Ultracharge unit, this was one one the first fast chargers installed in the UK and Highways England with BP were still installing it up until a couple years ago, it was supposedly state-of-the-art in 2017 and the unit was designed by https://www.la-design.co.uk/ultracharge and manufactured by Elektromotive/Elektrobay while the software was a valiant effort and rather sparse the units were plagued with communication issues, it could only charge one car at a time with 50kw max, nowadays besides a variety of other chargers Pulse has committed to a large number of Tesla Supercharger V4 units as the successors and that’s what you see here with the bp pulse branding.
Moving on to the ABB section we have the two early heavyweights, ABB Terra and the ABB Terra HPC at 124kW and 175kW respectively these chargers were the darlings of the defunct ElectricHighway and the current times Gridserve, costing at around £50k and £75k respectively and needing large storage cabinets both they have only been recently superseded by the ABB Terra 360kW all-in-one charger that nobody in installing since the costs are almost double edging towards six digit. After initially being the biggest supplier in the market ABB seems to have lost out big time we can only suspect their notoriously wide connectivity issues and high costs as the reason why they are out the out.
Underneath ABB we have the chargers that virtually every network is installing nowadays instead, the Alpitronic Hypercharge HYC150 and HYC300 modular chargers, they can be configured in 75kW increments, the price range is £30-70k, they are robust, reliable and surprisingly serviceable, Alpitronic comes from a aviation charging background and somehow they seem to have hit on the winning formula that virtually all networks are choosing as the go to charger to install at the moment.
Next on another darling of UK motorway service stations and Highways England partnerships, the truly venerable Efacec QC45, it tops out at 45kW, used to cost as low as £20k and has not been installed for almost half a decade, the remaining units should be closed off as they are so riddled with rust I would not trust them not to damage your car in case you find one that actually starts a charge, underneath it the latest succesor is the Efacec HV350 which I could not find pricing information on and I have not head a single sighting of it being actually installed in the UK, please let me know if you do
And we have reached EvBox, with a large install base and many design awards to its name the charger that was state-of-the art in 2019 across council carparks (and largely free of charge for one blissful year) was the EvBox Troniq with up to 50kW DC and a simultaneous 22 kW AC as a bonus it could charge two cars at the same time, it sounded like the fans are taking off with the whole unit when it did and there was a fine dance of restarting charge required but otherwise it was relatively reliable both hardware and software wise, its lates successor is the EvBox Troniq High Power entirely redesigned and up to 400kW is almost ten times faster and only 2 times more expensive at around £50k, it is currently part of deployments on mainland Europe but i’ve not head of any instances of it on UK soil as of yet.
I’ve left Tritium for last as its quite a unique one, with over two decades of experience focusing on chargers Australia based Tritium have now almost entirely moved to the US and while low on the scale on market capitalization underneath the larger Chargepoint and Wallbox they found success with the rugged, dust/proof Tritium RT50 50kW charger starting around £30k it was widely deployed and can be find in the uk as the first fast charger in Tesco and Morrisons forecourts, its most recent successor while it has not made any appearances at large is the Tritium PK350 if anyone has pricing and deployment info please let me know.
On the row before in black you can spot that it was even licensed to giant Siemens as the Versicharge Ultra 50 virtually identical in appearance, can’t really say I know why that was, I can only speculate that Siemens did not have anything ready at the time, now they finally have the Sicharge 400kW even if it seems to be rather confined to small corporate deployments.
Notable mentions :
Ionity https://ionity.eu/en/ionity/who-we-are while not totally free of issues one of the better designed and integrated chargers
Wallbox https://wallbox.com/en_uk/charging-solutions/public-and-semi-public-ev-charging-solutions one of the bigger players within energy management
Porsche https://www.porsche.com/uk/aboutporsche/e-performance/charging-bev/ Porsche is using Alpitronic chargers at their charging lounges but makes their own superchargers for dealerships and has a range of home charging solutions
NIO Power https://www.nio.com/nio-power
(Almost*) All chargers by manufacturer :
*see the evmetrics app for a up to date list
