Charging an electric car in Chiang Mai — a practical guide

Start here: you will not need to charge on day one

Every car we hand over is fully charged, and that first charge is free. The BYD ATTO 3 and BYD Dolphin both do around 400 to 480 km on a full battery in real conditions, which is far more than anyone drives on their first day in Chiang Mai.

So do not spend your arrival worrying about this. Read the rest before your second or third day.

The connector: CCS2

Both of our cars use CCS2 for fast charging and Type 2 for AC. This matters because CCS2 is the dominant standard in Thailand — essentially every public fast charger you will encounter supports it. You will not need an adapter and you will not find yourself at a charger you cannot use.

The charging cable for AC points lives in the boot.

AC and DC, in numbers that mean something

AC charging is what you find in hotel and mall car parks. It adds roughly 30 to 50 km of range per hour. That sounds slow, and it is — but the point is that you are not waiting for it. You plug in when you park and unplug when you leave. Two hours over dinner is 60 to 100 km, which covers a normal day of city driving.

DC fast charging is what you find at petrol stations and dedicated charging sites. On our cars it takes the battery from 20% to 80% in roughly 30 to 40 minutes. That last 20% deliberately takes as long again, which is why nobody charges to 100% at a fast charger unless they are about to drive a long way.

The practical rule: AC while you sleep or eat, DC while you have a coffee, and never wait at a charger for a full battery.

Where the chargers are in Chiang Mai

Shopping malls. The large centres around the city all have chargers in their car parks, typically a mix of AC and DC. This is the easiest option for visitors — you park where you were going to park anyway.

Petrol stations. The major fuel networks have installed DC fast chargers at many of their forecourts, particularly on the ring roads and out along the main highways. These are the ones to use when you actually need speed.

Hotels and condos. Many mid-size and larger properties have an AC point for guests. Ask reception before your pickup day — if the answer is yes, you may never visit a public charger during your stay. This is the single most useful question you can ask.

Inside the old city moat: none. There are no fast chargers inside the walls. The nearest are 5 to 10 minutes out. If you are staying in the old city, plan to charge on a trip you are already making.

Apps to install before you arrive

Do this at home over hotel wifi rather than at the roadside.

• The charging network apps. Thailand's charging networks each run their own app, and several require registration with a phone number and payment card. Registering takes ten minutes and is far easier before you need it.
• A map aggregator such as PlugShare, which shows chargers across all networks with user photos and recent check-ins. The photos matter — they tell you whether the charger is behind a barrier, in a paid car park, or blocked by a parked car.
• Google Maps, which now lists many charging locations directly.

Payment is generally through the network's own app rather than a card reader on the unit, so having at least one registered account before you set off is worth the effort.

Costs

Public DC fast charging in Thailand typically runs somewhere in the region of ฿7 to ฿9 per kWh, with AC charging usually cheaper. A 20-to-80% fast charge on our cars is roughly 35 to 40 kWh, so budget around ฿250 to ฿350 for a substantial top-up.

For comparison, that is well under half what the equivalent distance would cost in petrol.

Our return policy is simple: bring the car back at roughly the battery level you collected it at. If it is lower we charge the actual cost at ฿8 per kWh. We do not use the petrol-car "full-to-full" rule, because charging to 100% at a fast charger takes disproportionately long and is not good for the battery — asking you to do it before returning the car would waste an hour of your day for no reason.

Planning a longer trip

For anything within about 150 km of Chiang Mai — Lamphun, Lampang, Chiang Dao, San Kamphaeng, Mae Rim — you can leave with a full battery, drive there and back, and never think about charging.

For Pai (about 130 km but on a demanding mountain road) and the Mae Hong Son loop, plan properly. See the Chiang Mai to Pai guide and the Mae Hong Son loop guide, which cover the charging situation along those specific routes.

Three general points for mountain driving in an EV:

1. Climbing uses range fast. Expect consumption well above the flat-road figure on a sustained ascent.
2. Descending gives much of it back. Regenerative braking on a long downhill genuinely recovers a meaningful amount of charge — you will watch the range estimate climb.
3. Leave with more than you think you need. The rule of thumb is to arrive at each planned charging stop with at least 20% remaining, so that a broken or occupied charger is an inconvenience rather than a problem.

When you get to a charger

• Check it works before you commit. Recent check-ins in PlugShare are the best signal.
• Sites often have several units. If one refuses to start a session, try the next before assuming the site is dead.
• Do not block a charging bay once you are done. In Thailand as elsewhere, this is the thing that annoys other EV drivers most.
• Sessions sometimes stop early. If the app shows the session ended, unplug, replug and start again — this is normal and not a fault with the car.

If something goes wrong

Message us on LINE. We know which sites are reliable, which networks are having a bad week, and where the nearest working alternative is. That is a genuinely useful thing about renting from a small local operator rather than a franchise counter: someone who actually drives these roads is on the other end of the chat.

We are available 24 hours a day on 091 072 3336.