Electric Car Charger Sockets

When you connect your electric car or van to a charging point you'll notice that not all connectors are the same.

Your electric vehicle manufacturer will have provided you with a cable (in fact usually two, so you can use both slower home chargers and fast or rapid chargers on route).

But when you recharge away from home you may well encounter different types of plugs on the chargers you see.

Why Sockets Are Different

The power that comes from the UK National Grid when you plug in your electric car is type AC (or Alternating Current).

But a battery in an electric car only stores electricity as DC (or Direct Current).

So to switch the current between AC from the mains to DC in the batteries and then back to AC (for typical electric car motors) an 'inverter' is used.

When you are recharging an electric car, the inverter in the car is actually converting AC power from the Grid to DC power to store in the batteries.

And depending on the capability of the batteries in your electric car and the inverter, different types of socket are used for the plug on your electric car to cope with the power output of the chargers (measured in kiloWatts).

Which Socket Does My Electric Car Use?

We've put together details of the battery performance and charger socket types for new cars so you can check the socket type before you buy an electric car (and other factors too, like recharge times).

Scroll down to choose the car manufacturer or car body style you want to look at, then when your search results appear click on the 'Battery' or 'Performance' buttons to see all the data you can view.