The question every business asks first is what the chargers cost, and it is the least useful number in the project. Hardware starts at £409 for a 7.4kW commercial unit and £469 for 22kW. On a six-bay installation, the chargers will typically be a minority of the total. The cost lives in the electrical work.
Where the money actually goes
Four things drive the bill, roughly in order of impact.
Distance from the supply. The cable run from your distribution board to the bays is often the single largest line. Cost scales with length, with what the cable has to cross, and with whether it can be surface-mounted or has to be dug in. Bays on the far side of a car park across a tarmac surface cost multiples of bays on the wall of the building.
Available capacity. If your incoming supply cannot carry the load, you either reduce the load or upgrade the supply. A reinforcement from your distribution network operator runs into thousands and takes months. Load management — from £160 for a single-phase device — is the alternative, and it usually allows several times more charge points within your existing capacity. On most sites it is the highest-return item in the whole project.
Groundworks. Bays that are not against a wall need posts from £240 and either a poured foundation or a pre-cast base from £275. Excavation, reinstatement and traffic management on a live car park all add up, and they are per location — which is exactly why dual socket units matter.
Protection and containment. A dedicated consumer unit from £72, EV-rated cable, glands and containment. Modest individually, but they are per circuit.
Why dual socket units change the maths
Every one of those costs is incurred per location, not per socket. A dual socket charger serves two bays from one cable run, one excavation, one foundation and one connection. The EVEC VECSPRINT EDW02 at £1,320 or VCHRGD TwentyTwo at £1,550 cost more than two single units in hardware terms and less than two single units installed. On any site with more than two bays, price both ways before deciding.
Back-to-back posts do the same for wall-mount chargers, carrying a unit on each face to serve adjacent bays from one upright — £355 for the e.Park version.
What the grant returns
The Workplace Charging Scheme pays 75% of the total purchase and installation cost, up to £350 per socket, capped at 40 sockets. Two consequences worth planning around. A dual socket unit attracts up to £700, which strengthens the case for dual units still further. And because the 75% rule bites on cheap installations, a socket costing £400 all-in returns £300, not £350 — the grant rewards doing the job properly rather than stripping it back.
A worked shape
For a six-bay workplace installation using three dual socket 22kW units, hardware might be around £4,000 to £5,000 depending on model, plus posts and barriers if the bays are freestanding. Installation varies enormously with the four factors above — a short run along a building wall against a long dig across a car park can differ by a factor of three or more on the same hardware. Against that, six sockets attract up to £2,100 of grant.
The honest answer is that nobody can quote a workplace installation from a bay count alone. What determines it is the distance, the surface, the supply and the socket count — and the first three need eyes on the site.
How to keep the cost down
Put the bays as close to the supply as the parking layout allows. Choose dual socket units. Fit load management rather than upgrading the supply. Lay containment for the bays you will want in three years while the ground is already open — the second phase is far cheaper if the route exists. And specify crash barriers from £155 at the outset rather than replacing a charger after the first reversing incident.
Get a specification and price
Tell us the number of bays, whether the site is single or three phase, roughly how far the parking is from the board and whether the bays are against a wall, and we will put together a specification and hardware price. Get in touch — free UK delivery and trade pricing on multi-unit orders. See also our guide to EV charging for workplaces.