Electric car and in laws.

[Cowcheese]

My in laws are here visiting in their new electric car. They’ve plugged their car in every evening for the whole week using an extension cable. Never once offered us money to pay for this, or even asked us - they just plug it in. If it was just one night of charge I wouldn’t mind, but every night for a week? They are wealthy and holiday all the time, we are struggling to hover above the breadline. How much does it actually cost to charge a car and why is it assumed that’s it’s ok to do this? It’s not the same as just charging your phone is it. Am I being cheap by letting this bug me?

Yes valid point!! They're probably only adding a few miles every night.

The 3 pin slow chargers are know as "granny chargers" as it is the lead you use when visiting other people such as your granny (you would usually have a type 2 charger installed at home, or use a type 2 or phase 3 lead at charging stations)

My fairly old electric car costs about £5 a night to charge (but charging from a very low battery to full- how many miles a day are they doing to need to charge it every night?).

I would never charge my car at someone’s house without asking first and offering to cover the cost. If I were you I would either ask them for £5 per night to cover the cost or just let it go if you are happy to absorb that sort of cost. Don’t stew over it and say nothing though.

This is extremely poor etiquette as an EV user, they should offer to pay. It will be between £15 and £20 for a full charge and they will know that. I wonder if there's a bigger issue with them being selfish, not realising you are struggling financially, or you having anxiety about raising things will them. Could your partner speak to them... or is that also an issue.

Yes real cats rule all

I don’t find the shower comment « unnecessary and nasty » to be honest.
When you have house guests it is expected to have some expenses and 5-10£ a night doesn’t seem over the top.
Opening a bottle of wine or even just buying extra portions of meat would cost more, and most people do that when they have guests, don’t they?
Your suggestion of unplugging, saying « we can’t afford this » and refusing to discuss further would be rude in my opinion.

But as a host would you be filling up your guests car with £5/£10 worth of petrol every night?

Guests showering and eating and drinking is an expected part of hosting. Fuelling their car is not.

^I don’t find the shower comment « unnecessary and nasty » to be honest.
When you have house guests it is expected to have some expenses and 5-10£ a night doesn’t seem over the top.
Opening a bottle of wine or even just buying extra portions of meat would cost more, and most people do that when they have guests, don’t they^

But these are the in laws, so not necessarily 'guests' as such, who are wealthy, whereas the OP is struggling. The extra food and extra showers, could be the best part of an extra £100 or more over the whole week, which the OP might not have. To just be able to brush aside extra costs like that is quite a privilege that unfortunately doesn't apply to everyone.

Yes but the EV charging is on top of the other expenses. Not instead. So it's probably doubling the cost.

Regardless, it's rude to charge the car without asking. Would you open a bottle of wine belonging to your host without asking? Personally I would take wine to their house anyway..not expect the host to provide it all...and even more so if they were worse off than me

I do really like him so you might need to sweeten the deal a bit

could you ask them to source an electric charging point locally ? or find one yourself and say “I have seen that XYZ location has a charging point of you want to take the car there
tomorrow to charge ?” And if they question you … just say , we can’t afford to charge your car , it’s like us paying for your petrol. Or say you have read that charging from mains is a fire risk and they need to find a proper charging point! … that’s less about you & your finances and more practical 👍🏻

Actually, if I somehow had a petrol station in the front yard, yes I would be filling up MY PARENTS car who are staying for a few days. And so would they when I am visiting. I can't think of anyone who would resent £5 on family members.

If I was struggling, I would TELL them?

I can't comprehend the stinginess on here, but it also goes with the general MN hatred for hosting and the reluctance to spend a penny on guests. The horrified comments about having to spend money on FOOD for your own guests, all very strange.

Did you miss the part where the OP said they were struggling to stay above the breadline? They might genuinely be unable to afford to host their in laws like this for a week.

I'm sure if money was no object they'd be happy to pay for unlimited food and electricity all week but it isn't and it sounds like it's costing far more than a fiver anyway.

Charing an e-car is bloody expensive. We used to have one and our electricity bill went through the roof!

Your DH needs to ask them to pay for the electricity they're using.

If you're worried about coming across 'stingy' or 'tight' or would rather they didn't know that you hover above the breadline, get your DH to just ask them to stop charging the car because of the huge fire risk of using an extension lead!! 😵that's shocking (pardon the pun)

I’m not saying I’d refuse to discuss further.
I’d tell them to talk to OPs partner. These are OPs in-laws, they are not OPs relatives to deal with.

if you’re struggling week to week financially, then in-laws rock up and cost you more.
they are being rude and presumptuous that it’s fine to do.

did you miss the part where I said the PARTNER should discuss with their own parents?

Slightly off-topic, but are they just using a standard extension cable? Because that is incredibly dangerous and they absolutely should not be doing this. You can plug your electric car into your mains using a special kind of cable (they have a sort of giant cuboid converter thingie so you would be able to see the difference easily). But if they're using a normal electric cable, that's absolutely not okay and gives you an instant reason to tell them to stop!

Charging up an electric car with a granny charger is fine provided your electrics in good shape.

Mine draws about 10A. There is pretty much no appliance in your house that will draw as high a current for as long a time (10 hours or so overnight).

The problem is that a lot of peoples electrics aren't up to scratch and there is no mandatory inspection process. So a lot of people find out whether their electrics are up to scratch or not by plugging the thing in for 10 hours and seeing whether the sockets melt.

My recommendation would be always be get your electrics checked out beforehand by an electrician.

If you are going to be doing a lot of car charging then it really makes sense to have a dedicated charger installed because that way there are some additional protection such as dedicated earthing and beefed up wiring will be installed, as well you will be able to charge your car faster. It will also be on its own separate circuit, so there are less concerns about overloading sockets.

Suggest you use Zap Map or similar to find the nearest ultra rapid charger and send them details of it, with a comment to effect that you can't let them charge at home any more because you need to keep a really close eye on the bill. And also that you've realised your house insurance doesn't cover regular charging with a granny charger.

It really shouldn't cost a fortune. If you've got a smart meter and an electric vehicle, then there are lots of tariffs you can access which give you super cheap rates where you can charge up.

Octopus Intelligent Go (need a compatible car or charger) gives you 5 hours at 7.5p per kWh, plus other random slots during the day.

Octopus Go (if you don't have a compatible car or charger, which we don't) gives you 4 hours at 9p per kWh.

Octopus Agile (don't need an EV at all to access this tariff, but works best if you can move usage away from 4-7pm) gives you 30 minute slots at different rates. Sometimes you get negative rates (when there is lots of wind for example).

We were on Go for winter, and moved to agile for summer. We have solar panels and a house battery, so can really maximise the negative/super cheap rates on agile. And during winter, we filled up our house battery every night at 9p per kWh, which then ran our house for the day.

Charging an electric vehicle IS expensive if you only use chargers that are out and about. In this case, it's going to cost the equivalent of filling up with petrol or diesel. But charging at home is much cheaper, especially if you access a decent rate.

As for the granny chargers (3 pin plug), all three of ours charge at 1.3kWh, so should be easy to figure out how many hours it was plugged in for x the cost of your electricity per unit.

My parents do this too and it annoys me! YANBU for that reason. It doesn’t cost nothing.

The cost depends on how much they’re driving each day, if they’re not doing much it won’t be charging much. I have an electric car and it costs about £13 to put 160 miles on. Same as a petrol car running out of petrol, if you left it fuelling all the time the pump would stop drawing when the tank is full. The car will stop drawing electricity when the battery is charged.

If they’re using a proper granny charger it’s perfectly safe as long as your electrics are fine, it doesn’t draw more current than any other device, hence why it takes so long to charge the battery (and why they’ll need to leave it plugged in so much)! We don’t have an EV charger yet and manage fine with the granny charger it’s not dangerous.

Do your in-laws get things for you/spend money on things for you?

If so, I do think you can let this go as the charge cost will be fairly negligible - I doubt they are using a full battery charge each day and charging up to full, especially on a granny charger. It sounds like they might be using 20-30% and then topping up so the cost will be fairly low even on a non-EV bespoke tariff.

Very rude of them not to ask. (Flashbacks of my dad opening up my laptop and installing Skype on it without my permission).

I love the idea of Octopus Agile! I've been reading about it on another forum- theoretically they can pay you to charge your car on a windy night! I don't own a EV and I'm not geeky enough to continually monitor usage, so no for me though.

We have a Peugeot-e2008 and a full charge costs £3.30 if that helps. It’s a 50KW car and we have an EV charging rate of 7.5p per KWH overnight. As you’re unlikely to be on an EV charging rate, you need to find out what the KW of their car is and multiply it by your unit rate. That will give you an idea of the price of a charge.

And yes, I would definitely charge them. You wouldn’t buy their petrol.