Visitors Electric cars charging at your house?

[Reallyreallyborednow]

so random thought yesterday after receiving my electric bill.

couple of close friends/family have electric vehicles. These are fairly short range, so need charging after an hour or so.

when they come to visit it’s about 40 mins, so they drive, plug into my electric to recharge while visiting/we go out in my car, so they can get home.

never really thought about it before, but one is coming soon as we’re driving a couple of hours to visit an attraction that’s nearer me. So no doubt they’ll drive the electric car and want to charge it, and I’ll have to drive to the attraction as mine is petrol and they don’t have the range.

are electric car drivers bu to ask if they can charge at someone else’s house? It seems U to say no, but I wonder how much it’s costing me to charge their car for a day.

although I add these people do have a petrol car, they just choose the EV, no doubt because it’s cheaper. No malice or bad intention, I think they see the request for a plug to charge their car as no different to charging phone etc, and it’s not as if there’s anywhere else.

Its all pretty simple. You have a household charger. 99% of them so far are about 7kw units. Ie you can put 7kw into the car per hour. If its a 70kw car then you would need 10 hours to fill it (In theory but probably longer as they trickle charge the last bit).

So if you pay £0.20 per KW for household electric and they are putting 7kw in per hour you are paying £1.40 per hour they plug in. Adjust for whatever rate you pay for electricity. Adjust if you have a fast charger that pumps out more than 7kw.

Would i charge someone who needs a one off. Probably not. Would i charge someone who plugs in for the day while we go off and puts, say 10 hours of charging in at £14 then yes, i would ask them to pay up.

My charger has a card which can deactivate the charger. I haven't used it as there is always someone at home. When we go on holiday i have a manual override indoors which i trip. I have visions of some cf plugging in every day when i am away. I bet there are some households who have easily accessible charging units open to the public all day every day without realizing it.....

If the battery is say 70kwh and needs to charge from empty to full and you are paying 40p per kWh then that would be £28 to fully charge thier battery

I own an EV and we have a home charger. It’s not “the done thing” to ask to charge at someone else’s house. As others mentioned, charging on a 3 pin plug will eventually burn through/split a socket. It happened to me twice when waiting a few weeks to get my home charger fitted. There are plenty of public places to charge, there’s no need to charge at someone else’s house, and particularly not when they’ve only done a short journey. Just start saying no?

"I think it must cost a few quid to charge..."

There, fixed that for you :)

But you never need to charge a full battery (some is reserved and people rarely go below 10%) - at 2.2kw per hour (mine is 27.1p) - so that's 59p per hour plugged in, and to charge a 70kwh car from 10% would take 28 hours (£16).

You really really need to get your electric checked if this happened - its only charging at 10 amps, your electric must be really bad if it burned through sockets....Means its not safe to boil a kettle in your house!

This is very cheeky. We have an electric car and would always make sure we charged on the way to or the way from your house. Not AT your house!

I'd say no. They bought the stupid thing with a small mileage, that's their problem. They can stop before my house, wait an hour or whatever to charge it, then pick me up, go out in their car, do the activity or whatever and drop me off home, before going to spend more time charging their car again. Surely if they bought an ev, they wouldn't want to use a petrol car, it's not environmentally friendly? Can't have it both ways, should have bought a better one.

It costs us around a fiver to fully charge up overnight. Had a smart meter fitted so we could see. A full charge takes it to 120 miles although it reaches around 80 realistically.

I drive an EV and wouldn’t dream of asking anyone if I could charge my car at their house. If really had no other choice, I’d offer to pay them something, I think a full charge in my car is about £12 but I’d offer more.

I'd say no. They bought the stupid thing with a small mileage, that's their problem. They can stop before my house, wait an hour or whatever to charge it, then pick me up, go out in their car, do the activity or whatever and drop me off home, before going to spend more time charging their car again. Surely if they bought an ev, they wouldn't want to use a petrol car, it's not environmentally friendly? Can't have it both ways, should have bought a better one.

Sorry are we talking about close family and friends here?

Just ask to split petrol from yours to the attraction. They're driving to yours, you're paying for them to drive home again, that's the only journey not split 50:50 anyway and without your fuel they wouldn't go.

With today's electricity prices, it's about a pound an hour charging off a 13A 3 pin plug.

I think they owe you a coffee, but not much more.

When we stayed at a holiday cottage recently with our electric car, I took a power meter with me and reimbursed the home owners for the electricity we used on the car. It was about £25, and it felt the right thing to do.

I don’t charge, it doesn’t cost much. I usually get a coffee and a cake out of it so I don’t mind.

That said though in our group there is one woman who NEVER charges her car at her own home. She just goes from friends house to friends house. It’s a piss take. We’ve started sending her down the local Tesco where they have a bank of chargers.

I’d expect them to at least ask first. You can’t assume someone’s wiring is capable of the extra load. (We had to have some upgrades before a wall box got fitted). If they offer a fiver/coffee while we’re out too then I’m happy.

This ^

Agree with this. I don't think it's anything to do with culture though.

That's incredibly cheeky of her! I did wonder whether supermarkets are eventually going to stop free charging as well though. I saw a woman park at Aldi the other day, she plugged her car in then went to the gym up the hill. I know people are saying it 'costs pennies' but someone has to pay for it. With the price of energy going up, is this going to be added to the price of your shopping to cover it, if it isn't already?

*wallpoppy
And as a guest in someone else's home- I would fight them for the bill if we went out for a meal together, and would always offer to cover petrol if we went somewhere together in their car (and in fact I would probably just get out of the car and go inside to pay without asking and giving them the chance to say no)- and I would offer to pay just out of courtesy if I needed to charge my car, but I would also think they were very weird and stingy if they took me up on it (the car charging, not the restaurant bill or the petrol). I can't imagine any of my friends doing that, not because they are all rich and don't care, but because they are not weird and stingy.*

Indeed. Who needs enemies when you've got close family and friends like some of the posters here.

What make is their car? This article indicates that charging the cheapest electric car costs 6.3p per mile. Prices have doubled since then, so 40 x 12 = £4.80 for their journey to you.

www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1586701/Cheapest-Electric-Cars-Charge-Per-Mile-bmw-mini

But no electric car I've come across has such a limited radius. The worst electric vehicle I know is an electric van that is supposed to do 180+ but only really gives you 100. But even that should be enough to get them to you and back.

This would really annoy me. Do they contribute to the petrol at all or part of ay fr lunch/dinner in exchange?

We don't have any EVs or know anyone who has one but this thread is interesting as it is going to happen eventually. New etiquetes for new world.

I guess i'd view it the same as if family turned up and wanted to all plug their phones in for a charge up. ie: <says> ''Ok, no probs, go ahead'' <thinks> why didn't you get one which holds a charge for longer!?

Statement of the bleeding obvious but the cost depends on how much you pay for your electricity. We charge ours from about 150km to 300km on the overnight rate and it is about 3€. We are not in the UK!

YANBU
We have an Electric car which we charge at other people's houses occasionally. I would never charge without offering to pay, especially now. I think sometimes it is easy to forget, or not to think about, how expensive it is to charge during the day time as home chargers are generally set up to charge at night on a special EV tariff.

DH and I were discussing just this weekend what to do about charging at PIL as we visit fairly frequently and need to do quite a big charge. They would never accept money let alone ask for it, but with prices going up so quickly it's an awkward one.