Rolec EVO vs Wallbox Quasar 2: £449 charger or £6,100 bet on the future

A £5,651 gap — and what sits inside it

These are not really competitors. The Rolec EVO is a £449 AC wallbox that puts electrons into your car. The Wallbox Quasar 2 is a £6,100 bidirectional DC unit that can push them back out again — into your house during a power cut, or onto the grid when export rates justify it. The price difference is £5,651 before installation, and the installed gap is wider still.

Comparing them is less about which is better and more about which question you are actually asking. If the question is "what should I put on my wall to charge my EV?", the answer is the Rolec EVO and this page is nearly over. If the question is "should I spend over £7,600 to become a V2G early adopter?", that deserves a longer conversation — and an honest one.

What the Rolec EVO does for £449

Built in Boston, Lincolnshire, the EVO is an untethered 7.4 kW smart charger with a five-year warranty. It includes a CT clamp for dynamic load balancing, built-in Type A RCD, surge protection, and PME fault detection. Those last three items matter at the till: most AC chargers need an external RCD and sometimes an earth rod or PEN device, adding £150–£250 to the install bill. The EVO skips them.

Pair it with a time-of-use tariff — Octopus Go at 8.5p/kWh, or E.ON Next Drive at 7.5p/kWh — and the scheduled charging does the job. Solar owners get Eco and Eco+ surplus modes. The app is still maturing and there is no cellular fallback, but for a sub-£500 unit with these install savings, the value proposition is plain.

Grant-eligible buyers — renters and flat owners — can claim the £500 OZEV grant, which covers the £449 unit outright and contributes toward install costs too.

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

The Quasar 2 is the first mainstream bidirectional home charger to have a UK product page. It pushes up to 12.8 kW in both directions over CCS2, enabling vehicle-to-home backup and vehicle-to-grid export. On paper, it turns a compatible EV into a home battery with ten times the capacity of a typical wall-mounted unit.

The caveats are substantial. UK availability is pre-registration only — you cannot buy one today. The £6,100 figure converts from the European list price; a confirmed UK RRP does not yet exist. Installation requires a specialist and a DNO G99 application, which carries a 30–60 working-day lead time. Installed cost is estimated above £7,600. The warranty is three years, which is two years shorter than the Rolec EVO's — on a unit that costs more than thirteen times as much.

And the compatibility list is short. The Kia EV9 is the headline partner. Most UK Teslas, most Volkswagen Group EVs, most everything else on British driveways today cannot use the bidirectional feature. You would be buying hardware in advance of the ecosystem.

When £6,100 might make sense

There is a narrow case. If you own a compatible car, have solar panels generating surplus you currently export at the SEG floor rate, and a V2G tariff emerges that pays meaningfully for grid export, the Quasar 2 could repay itself — eventually. The arithmetic depends on variables that do not yet have firm UK values: export rates, battery degradation terms from car manufacturers, and how DNOs handle G100 export limits in your area.

For buyers who want to *prepare* for V2G without the bidirectional price tag, the Indra Smart PRO at £599 or the Zaptec Go 2 at £500 are AC chargers positioned as V2G-ready — they charge today and could participate in future V2G schemes via software updates, at a fraction of the cost.

The verdict

Buy the Rolec EVO if:

• You want a smart home charger that works now, costs £449, and saves further on installation
• You value a five-year warranty from a UK manufacturer with a decade of commercial charging history
• You have solar panels and want surplus diversion without paying £700+

Buy the Wallbox Quasar 2 if:

• You own a CCS2-compatible bidirectional car — today, not in theory
• You have committed budget above £7,600 and accept pre-registration uncertainty
• You want V2H backup power and are willing to be an early adopter on V2G economics

For the overwhelming majority of UK EV drivers in 2026, the Rolec EVO is the sensible wallbox. It charges your car, plays nicely with cheap tariffs and solar, and leaves roughly £7,000 in your pocket compared to the Quasar 2 installed. The Quasar 2 is a fascinating piece of hardware aimed at a future that has not quite arrived. When it does — when compatible cars are common, V2G tariffs are proven, and the unit is on open sale in the UK — it will deserve a fresh look. Until then, the EVO does the job that matters.