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Top tip, don’t try to use a Tesla supercharger in Manchester on a Saturday night that Utd have had a home game. Finished work at 10.30pm and drove to Stockport, ended up waiting half an hour for one of the 8 stalls, only 26p/kWh though. At 1am all of the 18 stalls at the Trafford centre were still in use.
I don’t have an EV but my electricity supplier, Tomato Energy, have several time of use tariffs including one with 5p from midnight to 6am, 15p for two hours mid morning, 15p for two hours late evening and about 24p the rest of the time.
No referral scheme.
I thought you would have to SORN your car to restart the tax year?
You don’t. You just go through a screen warning you that you are taxing a car already taxed.
But if you SORN it you get a refund of future paid months by cheque
For example if you’ve paid until Dec 2025, when you get home on 28th Feb you can make a SORN and you will get a refund of 10 months. Wait until 1st March to pay again. Your car does need to be parked on private land or risk getting fined/clamped.
(Or if you are staying up until midnight to try and bag some Avios seats you can do it around then.)
As the refund is sent by cheque in the post, this is also a way to manufacture spending. If you SORN and retax every month, you can transfer 11/12ths of your annual car tax from Amex into your bank account. I’ve only done it when I was away and didn’t use the car for a full calendar month, not sure if DVLA will be happy to do it every month though…
Refunds of zero will be zero! What we are talking of here is taxing for a year at the last possible moment of the charge being zero.
I don’t have an EV but my electricity supplier, Tomato Energy, have several time of use tariffs including one with 5p from midnight to 6am, 15p for two hours mid morning, 15p for two hours late evening and about 24p the rest of the time.
No referral scheme.
I nearly moved to TE, but the rates really are so good that I’m not sure how sustainable the company is. I didn’t want to risk the company going bust and ending up stuck while my account transferred.
@Tracey Tomato Energy have been around for years as a commercial supplier, they only recently moved into consumer.
@Gordon – The other point I would mention is to consider if you are getting a home charger installed is to use a specialist installer rather than a general electrician. A general electrician will do the job but may not fully understand the nuances of getting it all set up in linking your energy supplier / EV / charging unit together and to determine who is controlling the charging timing etc.
I don’t have an EV but my electricity supplier, Tomato Energy, have several time of use tariffs including one with 5p from midnight to 6am, 15p for two hours mid morning, 15p for two hours late evening and about 24p the rest of the time.
No referral scheme.
I nearly moved to TE, but the rates really are so good that I’m not sure how sustainable the company is. I didn’t want to risk the company going bust and ending up stuck while my account transferred.
The switch process is much faster now, I’d expect it to be resolved quickly. Plus, Tomato only take payment for actual usage so you never build up a credit balance.
For me, the saving is worth it.
@Man of Kent – Thanks for the tip, and that would make sense for most people, But I run an M&E company, and I am a qualified electrician by trade! So I installed an Easee one charger (scandinavian company) a few days before taking possession of the vehicle, my wife is pretty well clued up, re the energy supplier side, I just deal mostly with UKPN in my line of work.
As Easee was rated as the company that has the least amount of problems/Faults, and their customers services came out as one of the top should a fault indeed occur, it was a good choice, as I called them and it was sorted quickly.
The charger took an hour or so to come on line, they said some connect immediately, and some take longer, all up and running now. Not the cheapest of chargers, but Im satisfied with it.
I don’t have an EV but my electricity supplier, Tomato Energy, have several time of use tariffs including one with 5p from midnight to 6am, 15p for two hours mid morning, 15p for two hours late evening and about 24p the rest of the time.
No referral scheme.
I nearly moved to TE, but the rates really are so good that I’m not sure how sustainable the company is. I didn’t want to risk the company going bust and ending up stuck while my account transferred.
The switch process is much faster now, I’d expect it to be resolved quickly. Plus, Tomato only take payment for actual usage so you never build up a credit balance.
For me, the saving is worth it.
Switch process is quick if you manage to get out before they go out of business. If you are still their customer is nothing but.
You’ll be moved straight away to the price cap tariff, and even after you are moved to a new supplier you won’t be able to change supplier or tariff for quite a while while they sort out everything.It must vary but people I know who went through the SOLR said it took about a month from the old supplier going bust to them being moved to SOLR and then to their supplier of choice.
It should be faster than that now, and the only unbilled usage will be for the current month.
It varies wildly depending on the busted supplier and how much of a mess they are. Considering Tomato can’t even bill their customers a lot of the times, I doubt they’ll be an easy case.
Nothing has changed with the process to claim that it should be faster now. If anything Ogfem will move much slower to make sure the interest of the other consumers that are paying for the changeover are protected.The billing issue I would say is for a minority of customers, specifically early joiners with SMETS1 meters. People joining November onwards with SMETS2 are getting billed correctly and new customers with SMETS1 are not accepted for TOU tariffs until Tomato have sorted that issue.
Sorry for the thread sidetrack. I thought it worth mentioning Tomato as 5p night rate and a day rate at approx the price cap is pretty good.
@Toaster – no need to apologise, I appreciated your input, the reason I started this thread was to ask posters for some advise on EV Tariff charges, and I am happy with the response, and now Rob has moved this chat, so it does not get lost, I hope that other posters can gain some useful information from it in future,
So thank you again to all that have contributed with recommendations.A heads up regarding the new EV tax!
EV owners are exempt from paying car tax until April 2025 – but you can delay paying it for another year, it does not matter when you car tax renews, you can tax it anytime, if you re-tax your EV in March, so it’s taxed for 12 months, you can delay the new tax (averaging £195 a year) until April 2026.I thought you would have to SORN your car to restart the tax year?
You don’t. You just go through a screen warning you that you are taxing a car already taxed.
Just a reminder to tax your EV this month.
A heads up regarding the new EV tax!
EV owners are exempt from paying car tax until April 2025 – but you can delay paying it for another year, it does not matter when you car tax renews, you can tax it anytime, if you re-tax your EV in March, so it’s taxed for 12 months, you can delay the new tax (averaging £195 a year) until April 2026.I thought you would have to SORN your car to restart the tax year?
You don’t. You just go through a screen warning you that you are taxing a car already taxed.
Just a reminder to tax your EV this month.
Indeed! As my wife’s new EV is above the 40k list price threshold, we are liable for £450 wealth tax, for the first 5 years, over and above the new tax on EV’s, so I’ve set a reminder!
No need to set up a reminder, just do it now.
Tomato Energy closed to new customers.
lmao ending soon
No need to set up a reminder, just do it now.
Yes, I am aware of the taxation timeframe rules,
But It would be a tad difficult to do this without the V5, this took 4 weeks to arrive! Hence setting several reminders to tax the vehicle when it does arrive, Received it 3 days ago, I purchased another EV for my daughter a week after the initial EV purchase, and that took only 5 days to arrive, also a V778 took 6 days to arrive.Any recommendations for a home charger? Preferably one that works with octopus intelligence go?
Also, on EVs, anyone have Elroq / EX30 / Atto 3? Would you recommend any of these?
Tomato Energy closed to new customers.
I noticed this too.
If you do regularly charge out and about consider Ionity £10pm sub brings the price down to 43p per kWh and most if not all of all are super fast 350kw chargers.
If it’s more sporadic then there’s still a few deals about (I probably only charge 5% out and it’s such a low % of my total cost I don’t really bother with price)
Instavolt also do cheaper off peak rate of 54p between 9pm-7am if you use their app, think contactless is coming at some point this year. They have a mixture of 50-350kw chargers but rapidly expanding their hubs and there’s a very good one off the M40 exit at Banbury.
BE.EV it’s worth downloading their app as again they offer discount for using it vs contactless but also then give lower priced off peak charging 9pm-7am
Hopefully more OEMs start install car to charger communication and more CPOs roll out the capability so you won’t need to faff with contactless or apps each time as the car is registered with them but tbh apps are so easy as it is.
I and most people I know used https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/ for home install as it was very easy process and very competitive. Personally I can’t fault OHME and they work with all the smart tariffs.
Any recommendations for a home charger? Preferably one that works with octopus intelligence go?
Also, on EVs, anyone have Elroq / EX30 / Atto 3? Would you recommend any of these?
Had a Zappi for a couple of years, no issues and works well with Octopus.
I tried to switch to a solar export tariff with Octopus now that I have solar panels and a battery but discovered that my Smart meter is a Smets1 that’s gone dumb. So I am now booked to get a new Smets2 meter installed on 3 April after which I can change tariff. In the mean time I am unfortunately exporting energy to the grid for free. My import from the grid in the last 48hours has been the grand total of 0.4kWh and for March so far have bought 33.8kWh but exported 58.9kWh according to the app that controls my battery and solar system.
Any recommendations for a home charger? Preferably one that works with octopus intelligence go?
Also, on EVs, anyone have Elroq / EX30 / Atto 3? Would you recommend any of these?
We have an Easee one charger, we picked this as it came out on top as the most reliable one, and Easee came out on top for customer satisfaction in rectifying problems, should anything happen, unfortunately Easee is not compatible with Octopus or OVO smart tariffs, at the moment.
You can find one that is compatible, easily online.We had a choice of a Kia EV3 or the skoda Elroq, but went for the EV3 GT Line S, as there were no Elroq models we wanted available at the time, and Kia’s 7 year warranty on the vehicle, batteries and the connected app being free for the 7 years was the decider, also the 370 mile range was a deciding factor, as that means all of our charging will be at home, making it cheaper.
I will be surprised if you get anyone that could recommend an Elroq as there were none available a month ago, the Kia EV3 was only available 4 months ago.
First EV for us, and these cars are packed with technology beyond anything we’ve experienced before, a lot to take in, and learn about, they can basically drive their self, and stop you from having an accident!
I would recommend you check that the EV you choose has 800V Architecture if possible, it was only normally available on the likes of the Porsche Taycan and the Audi e-tron GT.
But 800V Architecture is becoming more common, this Higher voltage allows for greater power delivery, leading to faster charging times and potentially higher powertrain efficiency. The Kia EV6 has this, but unfortunately it was not available on our EV3 at present.
There are plenty of reviews online for all the above EV vehicles, unless you don’t mind paying an extra £410 a year wealth tax, on top of the new EV tax coming in April, total per annum of £620, avoid purchasing one with a list price under £40k, we made this mistake by rushing into a purchase, but the savings vs our previous petrol vehicle will still outweigh this extra cost.
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