Energy company npower has announced plans to let customers charge their electric vehicles at home.

There will be home and public charging points available, with Britain’s first bespoke tariff for electric cars.

The announcement was made at Grand Designs Live at ExCel in London where npower showcased their new charging points, alongside a Tesla, the world’s fastest electric vehicle.

Rob Harper, group project manager at npower said: "The time has now come to help decarbonise the transport sector.

"We are considering all options for the tariff, but our main aim is to match the usage for charging the vehicle from renewable sources and to make it as affordable as possible. We hope to make the tariff available to consumers during the summer."

Npower plans to provide a variety of home and public charging points (‘juice points’). You will then be provided with several options to start the charging process.

Once authorised charging starts automatically and stops once the car is ‘full’. You can then pay by invoice or your internet account.

If you choose electric over petrol you’ll soon see the benefits, not just on an energy saving level, but financially too.

An average fuel car costs 12p a mile to run. Electric vehicles can cost less than 2p a mile, particularly with npower letting you charge your car at home at a time they will let you know is the cheapest.

Add all this to the known benefits of low carbon emissions, and road tax, congestion charge and company car tax exemption, plus the non-repayable government grant of up to £5,000 towards the purchase of an electric car, and you can see why npower state that 41% of Brits would consider buying an EV in the next five years.

[Image: jurvestson]