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.

CF alert.... not only are they using your electricity to charge their car, but using your petrol (and contributing to wear and tear) by then requiring you to use your car for day out! Double CF points if they also have a petrol car!

@RIPWalter - we usually charge at a local fast charger when we are out and about or visiting, running a cable from a 3-pin is a slow and inconvenient process. Having had an EV for over 3 years we know where we will charge on each trip that we do regularly and going to visit a new place is exciting as we get to experience another charger!
I have 1 friend who lives a distance away with an EV and a POD Point at home, we charge there and then they charge at ours when they visit. We only ever charge at home overnight on the special rate.

@Reallyreallyborednow - I would not be happy with visitors with silly EV with tiny ranges that only use them to get to my house and then expect me to drive them around, whether I have an EV or a petrol burner.

My friend has one. The car tells her exactly how much it just used while charging so she offers the exact cost to the person who supplied the electricity.

I'm with you on all of that @wallpoppy and my friends would do the same when we visit them. However, if I went to visit a friend in my petrol car I wouldn't expect them to give me money for my petrol - and charging your EV equates to that! Unless you both have EVs, visit each other's houses equally and the electric charging is reciprocated then it somehow feels unfair.

Our EV used to cost us £3 to charge overnight, but that was a while ago with a slow charger.

The only times I asked to charge at someone's house (and once, a holiday house) there was no available charger for miles. I think relying on it as par for the course is bad planning. If travelling a way we always fit in a fast charge when nearly there so we have enough to get back to a fast charge on the way home.

Unless they've all got Smart EQs which only do 60miles a charge, someone is fibbing/there's a misunderstanding.

And if they have all got Smart EQs, they're morons for buying what is billed as a 'city-only' electric car!

If you don't have an EV charger than them plugging into,your normal plug socket isn't going to get them very far, even with a small battery, they'd need to be plugged in for several hours.

We have electric cars and, when visiting family and friends and need a boost/charge, we look for fast chargers in the route/nearby. If a friend visited with a EV we would let them use our charger - but that would likely be a tit for tat thing - we'd charge at theirs and they'd charge at ours during visits. So would even out.

I'd always offer to,ish if I needed to charge at someone else's house in other circumstances. But 5 years into EV ownership that's never happened.

A standard 3 pin plug charge will be at the lower rate of charge - 2.3kw per hr mentioned above is probably about right (so around 57.5p per hr active charging at rate of 25p per KW. All plugs have fuses which will burn through and stop things setting off a fire if they are working properly and your house electrics if they are up to code will be fine. However most peoples just are not!!

We have a new electric car with a socket installed - it has special own fuse box, we have to have a certain amp on our main box and everything has to be earthed properly. It charges at 3.5kw. It charges the same rate as our household bills which will vary slightly by provider.

How much it will cost you to charge your guests car will depend on what your Elec co charge per KW, what size battery your guests car is and how depleted it is when they arrive.

Pod point is one of the cheaper external co chargers so if you went to one of their lidl store chargers you pay approx 28p per KWhr, my battery is a 50KW (bear in mind v new and has a 200 plus mile range) so to fully charge its 50x 28p so £14. GO to a Services and you can pay up to 90p per KW. Lidl can charge the battery at 7.5 or 22 or 50 per hr. In fact the 7.5s are free but you are limited to hr and a half. Most people don't run the car to zero though so that is the maximum cost - once the battery is full it stops charging and stops pulling power through.

I would suggest you investigate what charging facilities there are locally and suggest given the cost of electric these days that might be the safest option for now. It may of course mean they have to wait to drive home. They are a bit cheeky as a) you are paying to fill their car and b) the petrol for your own.

I think I would be asking for a contribution that covers the electric used and the petrol for the other journey (given the whole price of everything has sky rocketed

80 surely? They did that in 2017 - advertised as 99, mind you, but I regularly did an 80 mile round trip in one.

One thing I would suggest to folks regarding electric points at home, pay a tiny bit more and get one that allows an app on your phone - this can then tell you what charge was input and therefore how much it cost - I can then claim this back via expenses for a work car. Also if friends and rellies come you can see what it costs. I believe if they are on the same app they can just pay for themselves for what is used - although I haven't worked all that out yet

With regard older EVs the batteries become less efficient so its possible some of the older ones are more limited now.

My smart eq regularly did 70-80 miles in a charge, a bit less in winter. It was bought as a city commenter car though and we never did long journeys in it - we had an alternative EV car with a much bigger range for that.

We are in North Wales and have a chademo charger, so whilst it's not impossible to go to a fast charger it would certainly significantly reduce the time we get to spend with PIL and therefore the time they get with their granddaughter.

Interesting thread, and not the only social dilemma re electric cars. We are considering getting one. I asked my DH whether it would be easy to charge at work (he works for a well known FTSE 100 energy firm which offers a company car scheme with tax breaks for electric vehicles). He said there has been some debate, because there aren't enough charge points to go round. Some people want others to move their car when it has finished charging, but not everyone wants to interrupt their work day to do that. Increasing numbers will exacerbate these issues.

It genuinely wouldn’t occur to me to charge at someone’s house if visiting. I wouldn’t even ask. I think it’s cheeky if they didn’t ask/offer to pay given that rates are horrendous. YANBU.

I feel sorry for those on pre payment electric meters who have CFs for friends. With fuel prices rising so much I'd hate for anyone to need to charge their car at my house. I'm not on a pre payment meter but even so.

Looks like the Supermarkets are about £6 or £7 a charge.
Have you not just thought make them buy lunch or put a £10 in the car for petrol, as I am paying to charge your car, would be the easy way over this.
So they know it ha been noted they are getting a Free RIDE.

If you take a metre reading before the EV is charged then take another reading after its finished, you can see how many kwh ( units) of electricity the EV is eating up then muliply the number of kwh used by the tariff your energy company are charging you. Add on 5% VAT.

Due to the cost of living crisis, any decent person should offer to reimburse you, but if they don't you could do with asking them to 'cough up'

Its not a nice thing to have to do, but its not like they are charging a low current item like a phone.

Thanks all.

i was just wondering, as pp has pointed out there’s no etiquette as yet for this.

up to now I haven’t given it a second thought- and to be clear yes it’s an extension lead through the cat flap 😂 into a wall plug, and it’s a full day on charge so they can get home. It may be they’re just paranoid about running out of electric on a motorway, but I don’t think they have a special charger at home so maybe they struggle to charge it properly between journeys if a 3pin plug takes so long? I don’t have an EV and know nothing about them.

i know it’s not done with CF intent, and we do share expenses so probably won’t say anything, but if it were me with the current price of electric I’d probably offer at least offer a fiver or tenner. On one level it’s not much different to asking someone to take your car and put a couple of litres of petrol in it for you!

I don't think anyone should be expecting to charge at someone else's house. As others have said - stop at a charging point somewhere nearby before arriving. No one would expect someone to top up their petrol/diesel and the way electricity prices have gone no one should be expecting others to pay for the electricity to run their car.

It's something they should think about before buying their car.

I would just point blank look at them in utter incredulity and just walk away

That's my way of saying

'Fuck off no way you CF you should have thought about the logistics of this before you bought your car and don't ever think of asking me again because I'm not paying to fuel your bloody car'.

I would compare charging at your house with rocking up to a petrol station and expecting you to pay.
Cheeky!

We have an EV and if anything we would be the ones offering to drive to save friends the cost of petrol. What kind of car is it?? I might ask to charge at a friends in an emergency but would offer some money. It would be bad planning though.

Same @wallpoppy ! I can’t imagine charging guests to charge their car, unless it was costing loads and loads or I was really hard up. But they’re charging it for a short period and it’s going to cost a few quid? Yeah. Would never even think to ask them to cover it.