A new electric car comes with one more decision: the charger, the installer and the tariff.

A second decision, right after the car itself

A new electric car brings a second decision close behind it: which charge point to fit at home, who fits it, and which tariff it runs on. Most buyers have never had reason to think about their electricity supply before, and the choice usually has to be made quickly, against a delivery date.

VehicleChargers.co.uk sets out the arithmetic, the specifications and the rules behind that decision, for a reader working it out themselves.

How figures are sourced and dated

Prices, rates and grant amounts change. A scheme is amended, a price cap moves on, a tariff is withdrawn and replaced by another. Each figure on the site is shown with the organisation it came from and the date it was read, so a figure quoted in one month can be checked against whatever that organisation publishes next. Sources used this way include OZEV, GOV.UK, HMRC, legislation.gov.uk, Ofgem and Zapmap.

Where a rule comes from legislation, the regulations are named in full. The same applies to installation obligations taken from the Electric Vehicle Consumer Code for Home Chargepoints: the clause is quoted.

The calculator that compares home and public charging costs uses figures from these sources as its starting defaults, each shown next to its source and date, and each one can be overwritten with the reader's own numbers. A result it returns is only as good as the figures sitting inside it, and a default left unchanged may not match what the reader is actually paying.

No affiliate links, no sponsored placements, no installer recommendations

Nothing here is paid for by a charger manufacturer, an installer or an energy supplier, and no installer is put forward as a recommendation. The site's contribution is the comparison and the arithmetic, and there's no charger or installer it has a reason to prefer over another.