Charging

How long, and what does it cost?

Home charging is slow, cheap and invisible; public rapid charging is fast, expensive and something you stand next to. Charging explained sets out why — this is the arithmetic for your car, your supply and your tariff.

The car and the plug

Car 410 km of quoted range — about 70 kWh of usable battery at 17 kWh per 100 km.

Where you plug in

Domestic socket 2.3 kW230 volts at 10 amps. The house circuit sets the limit, and it is slow by design rather than by fault.Single-phase wallbox 7.4 kW32 amps. The common home installation, and enough to fill almost any car overnight.Three-phase wallbox 11 kWWhere the supply allows it. Past this the car’s onboard charger, not the wall, is usually the ceiling.Public DC rapid 150 kWThe conversion happens in the cabinet, not the car. Anything from 50 to 350 kW, and the battery itself sets the limit.

Kilometres to addkm

Electricity price

€ per kWh

ConsumptionkWh per 100 km — the guide's band is 15 to 20

To add 200 km

4 h 36 min · €10.20

34 kWh at 7.4 kW. That is €5.10 per 100 km of driving.

Added per hour: 44 km
Added in 8 hours: 348 km
Empty to full (410 km): 9 h 25 min · €20.91

The gap between tariffs is the whole ownership case: the same kilometres cost €5.10 per 100 km here, and several times that on public rapid charging. If you cannot charge where the car is already parked, an electric car is neither cheap nor easy.

How the sum works

AC charging is limited by the car. The converter sits inside it — commonly 7.4 kW single-phase, 11 or 22 on three-phase — and that box, not the battery, is the ceiling. A thicker cable changes nothing.
DC rapid charging bypasses it. The conversion happens in the cabinet at the roadside, which is why it is the size of a wardrobe. There the battery itself sets the limit, and anything from 50 to 350 kW is on offer.
Energy is power multiplied by time. A domestic socket at 230 volts and 10 amps is 2.3 kW, and eight hours of that is 18 kWh. A wallbox at 32 amps is 7.4 kW, so the same night gives 59.
Kilometres come from consumption, not from the battery. A modern electric car uses 15 to 20 kWh per 100 km — more in winter, more at motorway speed, less around town. The figure is on the page because everything else rests on it.

The catalogue stores range rather than battery capacity, so the usable battery shown is inferred from the quoted range at your consumption figure — an estimate, and the reason it is labelled as "about". Euros and the European list, like the guides.

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