How to Charge Your Electric Car With No Driveway
If you don’t have your own off-street parking, our ultimate guide contains plenty of ways you can keep your electric vehicle topped up.
Last updated: Oct 06, 2025 • 9 min read
Summary
Charging an electric car without a driveway or private off-street parking used to be a challenge, but it’s now easier than ever with the expansion of the UK’s public charging network and alternative options like Kerbo Charge. In this guide, we’ll explore some of the top ways to keep your EV charged when you don’t have access to a dedicated home charger.
How can you charge an EV without parking it outside your home?
Charging at home using a dedicated home charger is undoubtedly the best way to charge an electric car. It’s more convenient, cheaper, and overall easier, and with around 65% of homes in the UK having private off-street parking, it’s something most of us can enjoy.
But that still leaves plenty of households that can’t get a home charger installed at their property. Despite the many benefits of switching to an EV, not being able to charge at home can be something of an issue for drivers who must instead rely on on-street parking.
Fortunately, modern problems receive modern solutions, and the EV driver of today has far more options available to be able to charge their car when they don’t have access to a home charger. From kerbside charging to destination and workplace charging, there are many alternatives that are still convenient, easy, and available for all drivers.
Kerbside charging from your pavement with Kerbo Charge
There have been various initiatives aimed at allowing homeowners to run an EV charging cable from their front door to their electric car across the pavement.
One of the main players in this space is Kerbo Charge, who will install an EV charging cable channel in the pavement from your door to the kerbside. You’ll still need to get a home charger installed, and once both the channel and the charger are installed, you then simply put your cable into the channel, close the channel’s lid, then plug in and charge. The lid allows other pedestrians to walk on the pavement without getting tripped up or blocked by your cable, though you’ll need to remember to remove the cable from the channel once you’re done charging.
However, before you can get started with Kerbo Charge, you first need to check with your Local Authority whether you have permission to run an electric car charging cable across the pavement. As of writing, Kerbo Charge is available in 30 LAs across the country, and as part of the installation they handle the approval process. For drivers living in the remaining 287, Kerbo Charge is actively working to get more LAs to join, and you can use a free email template supplied by Kerbo Charge to ask your LA directly to get onboard.
How to get an electric car charger installed if you live in a block of flats or apartments
Most people assume you need to live in a house to get a charger, but if you live in a block of flats or an apartment, you absolutely can get an EV charger installed. To start with, you’ll of course have to get permission, either from your landlord or the property manager, and from here there are a couple of directions your EV charger installation could take.
The first route is for the landlord or property manager to decide to install multiple EV chargers in the car park. This could be especially beneficial if the car parking isn’t allocated, as it will give you more than one option, although you will of course be competing with potential other EV drivers who live in the same block as you.
Tip: there is a unique EV charger grant for landlords and property managers which could reduce the costs of buying and installing chargers by up to 75% or £350 per charger, as well as an infrastructure grant for residential car parks.
Alternatively, if they don’t want to install multiple chargers but are happy for you to install one, you could claim a similar grant, called the OZEV EV Chargepoint Grant, which equally offers a reduction of up to £350 to get a charger installed. It’s aimed exclusively at people living in rented properties or who own a flat, although you must have dedicated off-street parking to qualify.
Other options for charging your electric car without off-street parking
Depending on where you live, you may have neither off-street or reliable on-street parking near your home, but don’t worry; you still have plenty of alternative options available that will conveniently keep your EV topped up.
Destination charging
One of the main focuses of public charging is installing chargers at places drivers will habitually visit, and stay at, for long periods of time. This means many charging providers are constantly adding public charging stations at popular destinations so that EV drivers can charge whilst they’re out doing something else.
A common example is supermarkets, with many offering chargers for customers so they can charge whilst they shop. Others include entertainment venues like zoos, shopping centres, hotels, tourist hotspots, gyms and leisure centres, and so on. With over 85,000 electric car public chargers in the UK - and counting! - drivers who can’t charge at home still have plenty of choice when it comes to keeping their EV charged whilst they’re doing something else.
This is also one of the main benefits of electric cars in general; unlike petrol or diesel cars, you can charge whilst doing something else. However, the downside to having to rely on public charging is that it’s generally more expensive than charging at home.
Rapid charging hubs
Along the same lines as destination charging, the UK is starting to see more rapid charging hubs emerge. These are high-powered chargers offering a charger rate of 50+ kW, making them much faster than home or other public chargers. For example, a 50 kW rapid charger could add up to 100 miles of range in around 35 minutes.
These add an extra dimension of convenience and flexibility in the public charging ecosystem, and can be especially beneficial for EV drivers doing long-distance journeys, or simply for people that live near them. However, they come at an added cost, with rapid chargers having the highest price tag per charge, although the higher cost comes with added convenience as rapids get you filled and moving again a lot faster.
That said, despite their benefits, rapid charging hubs are still likely to be few and far between, especially when compared with other destination chargers. That’s because of the huge amount of power needed for rapid chargers, making them costly to build and maintain. You also tend to find them in more remote areas en-route between popular destinations, which typically aren’t in residential areas, so even if you live near one it may not be as convenient to drive to than your local supermarket or other public chargers.
Plus, there’s the fact that not every electric car can charge using a rapid charger. And even if you have an EV that can physically plug into a rapid charger, that doesn’t necessarily mean it can take full advantage of the charging speed. However, almost all modern electric cars do offer rapid charging capabilities, although it’s worth noting than most hybrids can’t, simply because they don’t really need to.
Workplace charging
The COVID-19 pandemic may have caused a surge in working from home arrangements, but whether for necessity or personal choice, many people still work from an office. And just like public charging, it makes total sense to have EV chargers installed at workplaces because people typically spend a long time there, upwards of 8 hours or even more, with their car parked in the same spot.
Not only are workplace chargers great for EV drivers, but also great for businesses that want to flex their environmental credentials and impact, which in turn could help them attract EV-driving talent.
Tip: Pod’s workplace charging solution allows any business, regardless of the number of employees or size of their fleet, to effortlessly enable EV adoption with scalable, cost-effective, and proven workplace chargers and smart load balancing systems. Find out more about workplace charging here.
Not every workplace in the UK provides charging for its employees of course, but those that do may either offer it for free or charge a tariff. But with more drivers making the switch to EVs than ever before – over 1.6 million and counting - businesses are coming under more pressure to install workplace EV chargers to help encourage their employees to ditch the traditional petrol or diesel car.
Other on-street charging solutions
As well as Kerbo Charge, some places in the UK are trialling alternative methods to providing kerbside charging. These include installing lamppost chargers, allowing EV drivers to pull up alongside one and get a top up. However, these chargers tend to be quite slow, and unfortunately there doesn’t seem to yet be a scalable on-street lamppost solution just yet.
It’s important to also bear in mind that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Kerbo Charge or lamppost chargers may work for some drivers, but not all. For example, some drivers might find a cable gully from their door to the pavement helpful, but there are plenty of drivers who don’t have this luxury, and so might benefit more from lamppost or other roadside connections. Either way, it remains a challenging environment to install EV charging infrastructure on the side of pavements, both from a planning and administrative point of view.