In our customer stories series, we shine a spotlight on Indra customers and the real-world benefits they’ve discovered from charging smarter at home.
Charlie Parry is a long-time EV driver and father of three who first went electric for the savings, and gradually became more focused on running a greener, smarter home. He’s now on his second Indra home EV charger — he started with a Smart PRO, and when he sold his house and moved, he chose Indra again and upgraded to the Smart LUX. When we met with him, he talked about how much he values simple, reliable tech that fits smoothly into busy family life.
“I’ve been into EVs since 2017 or 2018. I’ve always had a Tesla. I got the first and second ones through company car schemes, and the third one, my wife got through her company’s car scheme. So, we’ve always, from that point of adoption, taken advantage of a tax break, whether it’s a salary sacrifice or private company benefits.
As much as I’ve worked in the energy industry, and I’m very ‘green’, it’s still been that financial incentive that has driven the decision. I’d like to sit here and think, ‘oh, I’m ‘green’, and an early adopter’ but it’s still a financial incentive.
In this current macro climate, where everything’s expensive, the cost of living is high, if you put a barrier on it, and it’s expensive to buy all these things, then people just won’t do it. So, if you can use some of these grants, investments, tax breaks, whatever it might be, to encourage the adoption, then you can drive the right behaviours long term, I think.”
Charlie said, “The first drive I had, was when I went to collect the car from the Tesla showroom in Birmingham. It was a bit of a mystery, as we’d just got an email saying, ‘come and collect the car’, with no fanfare or anything. And so, I walked across Birmingham to the station to pick it up from the showroom.
I’d never driven an EV before; I’d never even really seen much about them. Other than that, people had talked about them, said it was good, and it was a good deal. So, I went for it.
I had no idea about charging, or range, I had no concept that if you drive fast, your range is going to drop very quickly. So, I got into the car, got onto the M5 to drive back down from Birmingham back to Bristol. I got very excited about auto-cruise and shooting around and accelerating.
I got to about 4% charge. But fortunately, there’s a Tesla charging at the John Lewis just outside Bristol on the way back. And it took me – probably the same with everyone’s first charge – about 40 minutes to figure out how on earth to get it to connect. I was putting the wrong cable and charger in, and I was meant to be going to pick up my wife and mother-in-law in the centre of Bristol, and so I got there late.
But, yeah, I was probably about ten miles from running out of charge on my very first trip, because I had no concept of this thing and what it was, but it was brilliant.”
“Well, I probably should have had range anxiety. But I didn’t. I was fortunate that this charger happened to be there, and I was like, ‘oh, I’ll pop in there.’
But, no, I definitely should have had range anxiety and planned how I was going to get there.”
“On one trip from Bristol to Lincoln to visit friends, we were driving overnight with our two boys — both two and a half at the time — fast asleep in the back. We were in our Model 3 then, and although it said 210 miles of range, it was really closer to 180 on that journey, so we needed a charging stop.
It was about 11:30 at night, we were only a couple of hours from our destination… and of course, both boys woke up at the same time and absolutely did not want to go back to sleep. They cried all the way through rural Lincolnshire.
That moment made me think, ‘Maybe I need a bigger battery next time!’ But honestly, that’s the only journey that’s ever felt challenging — and it had far more to do with tired toddlers than the car.”
“Well, when we first started in an EV in Bristol, we didn’t have a home charger because we had workplace charging. But then, as we started travelling more, and my wife used to travel, we decided to get a home charger.
We trialled a subscription as we weren’t sure how long we were going to be in the house as we’d just had children. I don’t think the subscription model was really taken up in the EV world. But it was an old Indra charger we had back then, and then we moved down to where we are now, on the south coast. We went with an Indra again, as I liked the tech around it, the smart capabilities, the functionality, the simple app.
My wife enjoys the simplicity of the app, she’s less bothered about the tech and how it works and more like, ‘Oh, that’s exciting, we saved some money and saved some carbon on it.”
It’s great because you don’t have to set a schedule on it, because you just plug it in and in the morning, it’s charged up to whatever you want it to be.
So, we’ve had it for about a year and a quarter now, and it just sort of becomes part of the house.
In fact, when we sold in Bristol, with the old charger on the house, the estate agent said they reckon it added about five grand onto the house for that.”
Thinking of starting out into the world of EV driving? Read our beginner's guide to going electric.
Charlie’s experience shows how smart charging can reshape family life, modern mobility, and how we power our homes and think about energy supply.
Whether you are a homeowner taking your first step into EV ownership or considering cleaner, greener living, Indra enables you to charge intelligently, efficiently, and at the lowest possible cost.
Discover our range of home chargers and find out what Charlie and others are advocating. Engineered for quality and lasting value, simple to use, and built for efficient performance – this is smart charging at its best.
Charlie Parry is Chief Growth Officer for UrbanChain, leading the company’s growth, corporate development, structured finance, marketing and strategic partnerships. He’s also a veteran EV driver who has chosen Indra in two homes — starting with a Smart PRO, and upgrading to a Smart LUX when he sold his house and moved .
 | About the author: Sonya is Indra's Senior Content and Marketing Executive. She is a content writer with many years of experience who is now using her expertise to help Indra communicate their branding, products, and the benefits of EV driving for both individuals, society and the planet. |
