If you’ve joined the drive to cleaner motoring, well done. Now you will need to swop your old habit of filling up a tank with diesel or petrol and instead get used to plugging your car into a charging point to keep the battery topped up.

Your electric vehicle will come with an electric lead and a standard 3-pin plug, and you can actually plug it into any available electrical socket. You’ll probably find this inadequate, however, because this will give you an extremely slow trickle charge. It could take you around 35 hours to fully charge the car this way – depending on the make, model and battery capacity.

Using a three-pin plug will also be putting a long-term high demand on your mains electricity supply, and if the circuits are old they may crack under the pressure. There’s also the problem of having an easily accessible socket – its extremely dangerous to use an extension cord to charge an EV.

The best solution, favoured by most EV owners, is to install a faster charging wall box at home or outside your workplace.