EVEC VEC03 vs Wallbox Quasar 2: £369 charger meets £6,100 bidirectional bet

A £5,731 gap — and a category boundary

These two products share a wall-mount form factor and not much else. The EVEC VEC03 is a £369 AC wallbox that charges your car overnight. The Wallbox Quasar 2 is a £6,100 bidirectional DC unit that can charge your car, discharge it back into your house during a peak-rate evening, and — once DNO approval lands — export to the grid. The £5,731 between them is not a premium for a better charger. It is the price of a technology that barely exists in UK homes yet.

• EVEC VEC03 — £369, 7.4 kW AC, OZEV-approved. Charges a Tesla. That is the job; it does it.
• Wallbox Quasar 2 — £6,100, 12.8 kW bidirectional DC, UK pre-registration only. Charges a car *and* uses it as a home battery. If your car supports it, and if you can buy one.

What the VEC03 actually gives you for £369

The cheapest OZEV-approved smart charger in the UK. Its built-in Type A RCD with 6 mA DC leakage detection and PEN fault protection typically saves around £100 on the consumer unit work during installation. OCPP 1.6J means it is not locked to EVEC's own cloud — Monta and other back-ends work. The 5-metre tethered cable is the shortest in the category, which matters if your parking spot is awkward, but for a standard single-garage setup it is adequate.

The trade-offs are real. The EVEC app draws consistent complaints about Wi-Fi reliability, particularly around scheduled charging. There is no direct smart-tariff integration — the VEC03 does not appear on Octopus Intelligent Go's compatible list, and there is no hook into OVO Charge Anytime. On a simple off-peak tariff like Octopus Go, a manual 00:30–05:30 schedule is fine. On Octopus Agile, where rates shift every thirty minutes, you need a charger that chases them — and the VEC03 does not. For that, the Ohme Home Pro at £535 is the obvious step up.

Grant-eligible renters and flat owners should note: the £500 OZEV grant covers the £369 unit outright and chips into the installation bill too. That makes the VEC03 close to free hardware, with the grant doing the heavy lifting.

What the Quasar 2 promises — and what it cannot deliver yet

The Quasar 2 is the first mainstream bidirectional home unit to reach a UK product page. Up to 12.8 kW in both directions via CCS2. V2H backup during a power cut. V2G export to earn revenue from the grid. Solar self-consumption without a separate home battery. On paper, it is the product that collapses three boxes into one.

On the ground, the obstacles are substantial. UK availability is pre-registration only — you cannot order one today. Installation runs £1,500–£3,000 or more, requires a specialist installer, and needs DNO G99 approval with a 30–60 working-day lead time. The list of cars that support bidirectional DC in the UK is short; the Kia EV9 is the headline name, with more expected but not confirmed. Teslas, as of April 2026, do not support CCS2 bidirectional discharge. So a Tesla owner buying a Quasar 2 today would own a very expensive one-way charger.

The £500 OZEV grant does not apply to bidirectional DC units. The three-year warranty is identical to the VEC03's — which, at £369, feels proportionate. At £6,100, it feels thin.

The honest arithmetic of V2G payback

The pitch for bidirectional charging rests on arbitrage: charge at 7p/kWh overnight on Intelligent Go, discharge at the peak rate during the evening, pocket the difference. Assume a 10 kWh daily cycle, a 20p/kWh spread, and minimal round-trip losses — that is roughly £2 a day, or £730 a year. At an installed cost north of £7,600, payback lands somewhere around year ten, *if* your car supports it, *if* the tariff structure holds, and *if* the hardware lasts without warranty-exceeding repairs.

A GivEnergy EV Charger at £478 paired with a dedicated home battery achieves much the same outcome today, without relying on your car being parked at home during peak hours. The Quasar 2 is elegant in theory. The home battery is boring and available now.

The verdict

Buy the EVEC VEC03 if:

• You want the cheapest compliant smart charger in the UK — £369, with OZEV grant eligibility that wipes out the unit cost for qualifying buyers
• You charge on a fixed off-peak tariff and do not need half-hourly rate chasing
• You want a straightforward overnight charger and would rather spend the remaining £5,731 on, say, electricity

Buy the Wallbox Quasar 2 if:

• You own (or are about to own) a CCS2-bidirectional car — not a Tesla, as of today
• You have a V2G tariff, DNO approval patience, and a long enough investment horizon
• You want to be an early adopter of home energy storage via your car, and you understand the risks of pre-registration hardware

For the vast majority of UK EV owners — Tesla drivers especially — the VEC03 does the job. It is not glamorous. The app needs work. The cable is short. But it puts 7.4 kW into your car for £369, and if you qualify for the OZEV grant, the hardware is effectively covered. The Quasar 2 is a fascinating product for a future that has not quite arrived. When it does, and when Teslas support bidirectional DC, the calculus changes. Until then, the boring charger wins. Readers wanting something between the two extremes — better software, longer cable, smarter tariff handling — should look at our best smart EV charger guide.