Charge your electric car for free!
As most EV owners know, running an electric vehicle is much cheaper than a fossil-fueled vehicle, but did you know there are a few ways that you can charge your car for free.
Some of these tips may require you to sign up and where available, I have also included affiliate links, which I encourage you to sign up for too. I want to be upfront and if you don’t want to use my link, its not an issue at all.
Top ways to charge your EV for free
Tesla Referral Link
I’ve talked about the Tesla Referral link a lot, but if you’re in the market for a new Tesla, use one! It will get you and me a bank of supercharger miles, which currently stands at 1,000 miles each. Sometimes Tesla run’s promotions to boost the number of miles received.
Now the trick is, once you’ve got your Tesla, you will automatically get a referral link on the Tesla App. Now share it! There are lots of ways to share the link, but just make sure you do this within Tesla’s terms and conditions.
I’d recommend creating some content on YouTube of your shiny new Tesla, share it on Twitter or even write some blog articles. Even those who don’t do any of this have managed to bank some miles.
Octopus Energy
Yes another referral link to use, but Octopus Energy isn’t just a run-of-the-mill energy provider, they totally think outside the box.
As well as providing EV friendly tariff such as Octopus Energy Go, they also offer one called Agile. This is based on wholesale rates and can be paired with a smart charger such as the Ohme Home charger.
Using these, you can get your car to charge at the cheapest rates, sometimes, Octopus actually pay you to charge the cars with negative rates.
Now my trick is to sign up to Octopus energy using my referral link, we both get £50. Once signed up and your swtiched over, use your referral link and again share this.
I am currently earning approx. £150 per month in referrals, which easily covers my electricity and gas bill, including charging my Long Range Tesla Model 3. You can to if you use the same tactics as me.
Cashback or Point Credit Cards
I’m not always lucky enough to get a free charge when out and about, even the other week I had to find a charger quickly and ended up an an Instavolt charger in Sheffield, this accepted contactless payments.
In this case I used a Cashback Barclaycard, it gives me 0.5% back on every purchase. I don’t use this card as much anymore, but before I would use it for work expenses, groceries, subscriptions, etc. I would then request a payment when I’ve had to pay for my charge, making it effectively free.
I also use my American Express Gold Credit Card where I can at contactless chargers, although not all of them accept AMEX. In this case and using the app, I can use my points to pay for a charge. 1,000 points equals £4.50, so its quite easily to get a freebie. Signup using the link above and get 32,000 points when you spend £3,00 in your first 3 months.
Again, be careful with credit cards. I use them to pay for literally everything and pay off in full at the end of the month.
Shopping Centre Charging
Whilst as I write this, non-essential shops are closed. Its quite easy for me to pop into our local shopping mall for some groceries and charge the car for free.
More and more chargers are popping up and there are quite a few options including Sheffield Meadowhall, Leeds and Westfield London.
Tesla Destination Chargers
If you don’t mind a slow charge, there are quite a few Tesla Destination Chargers dotted around the UK. All free to use and you can find these at places such as Morley Hayes, The Belfry and certain hotels.
Finally…
As I find more ways to charge an Electric Vehicle, I will update this page. But there are quite a few options out there and its a good idea to try them while you can.
As more and more Ev’s hit the road, charging costs will become the norm.
If you have any idea,s drop me a line and I will include them on my blog.
