![]() “Electricity prices are rising, but so are the prices of conventional fuels, so the advantage of electric cars remains,” says Hora, adding that anyone who has the opportunity can generate electricity for an electric car at home using their own photovoltaic power plant.Ī network of charging stations where you can use POWERPASS A single card or mobile phone app gives users the chance to charge their car at a large network of 310,000 public stations, including fast charging stations in the IONITY network. On the public charging network, it’s easy to charge “just about anywhere” thanks to the POWERPASS service. And at 135 kW, the ENYAQ iV can charge from 10% to 80% capacity in just 29 minutes. A 50 kW charger can charge the ENYAQ iV to 80% of its battery capacity – the recommended charging level – in less than an hour it takes about one hour and twenty to reach full capacity. With DC charging everything is much faster. Charging from a conventional 230V socket is the weakest and therefore the slowest. The wallbox speeds up the charging process and an ENYAQ iV can be charged in six to eight hours, depending on its battery capacity. While public AC chargers typically have outputs ranging from 3.6 to 22 kW, a three-phase socket or home wallbox can handle outputs of 7.2 to 11 kW. Using the supplied charging cable, an electric car can charge from a standard electrical socket with a power output of between 2.3 and 11 kW. POWERPASS lets ŠKODA customers use the European public charging stations network.ĭepending on the method used, the charging power and the time the car has to spend connected to the charger will vary. Still, when travelling anywhere outside the EU, it’s a good idea to check what connectors are available at local charging stations and what sockets are used in the country and to equip yourself with the necessary adapters,” Hora advises. “Other types of connectors are used in Asia or the US, for example, but that’s not something a European motorist usually has to deal with. “In Europe we can still find the CHAdeMO connector, but it is much less widespread and CCS is the generally accepted standard,” explains Hora. ![]() There are 310,000 CCS connector chargers in the network of charging stations available with POWERPASS for problem-free charging anywhere using a single authorisation card. And shape-wise this is just an enlarged version of the Mennekes type connector, which is the standard for AC charging and is therefore found both in home wallboxes and in the cable supplied with the car, which can be connected to both 230 V two-phase and 400 V three-phase sockets.ĬCS (Combined Charging System) connect and Mennekes charging cable In Europe, a connector called CCS – Combined Charging System – has become the standard for DC fast charging. The ŠKODA ENYAQ iV can handle up to 11 kW of power in this way, for example.Īs far as connectors are concerned, there are several types, but ŠKODA drivers do not have to worry about not being able to plug their car into a charging station. ![]() The charging is managed by the car itself and everything goes through its own inverter. So the standard inverter in cars is compact and can handle outputs in the order of units to the lower tens of kW, which are the outputs that AC charging at home from a wall socket, wallbox, or on the road from a public charging station will provide. And if a car were supposed to have an AC to DC converter on board for high power outputs, as DC chargers normally do, it would be too big and heavy. However, the inverter requires particular parameters for particular outputs, if only because of the thermal load its operation involves. It’s like this: the battery stores energy in the form of DC voltage, and the car needs to have its own on-board inverter that will allow the battery to be recharged with DC current even from the AC mains. The inverter is in a way the main reason why these charging methods differ in the maximum power they normally provide. ![]() AC charging is charging the car from the regular mains DC charging from a charging station with an integrated inverter. ŠKODA offers wallboxes for convenient home charging, including the option of installation.īut if we’re talking about charging per se, the underlying science, then there are two options: alternating current (AC) charging and direct current (DC) charging. At home you would use the standard cable supplied with the car, or the plug of an installed wallbox, while on the road it would usually be a cable that’s an integrated part of a charging station. The issue of charging electric cars could either be very complicated, or simplified down to saying that you just need to plug the supplied cable into a socket and that’s it.
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