The neighbour and the EV charger

[Alittlebit9]

DH has an electric car, and had a charger installed at home on Friday. It cost him £1200.

Today, neighbour (who we are fairly friendly with, in a neighbourly way) has messaged me to ask if we would mind if they used it from time to time. I think she’s being a CF and this will be a slippery slope. Plus it’s on our driveway so we would have to move our cars. Also, I know it isn’t expensive but it’s going onto our bill.

YABU - let them use the charger
YANBU - they need to get their own

Are you sure you haven’t just given her permission to use it at night when she sees you are not?

We have a charger at our holiday apartment, had to lock it up because people were using it when we weren’t there. So cheeky because it’s so obvious that it’s privately owned. Absolutely say no.

I'm going to do this next time I get a CF try it on.

Sort of thing my neighbour would ask - she wears the crown cf and it would be a hard no from me

You need to lock the charger otherwise she'll be using it when you are out, despite you saying it's too expensive during the day.
What a fucking cheek.
If you have an electric car you need to get your own charger installed or charge it somewhere else and pay over the odds for the electricity.

'Sorry, we won't be letting anyone else use the charger. Here's the link to the installation company we used'

And move on.

If she sends argumentative messages, ignore them. If she approaches you in person, just repeat.

And make sure you get a lock for it!

Because you said your costs were way higher with someone using an EV???

Of course. My rates are
£5 per hour parking (partial hours charged at full hour)
£1 per kw used

That should more than cover any inconvenience caused.

70kw battery being charged at 7.4kw should take best part of 10 hours.
£120 to fill the car up should make her think twice.

"Sorry we didn't go with the extra option for itemizing separate re-charges as we didn't want to use our time to have to send bills out to people"

No I didn't.

This is from your post ‘managed to rack up £14 of electric costs. It might not all have been the car but I know she did charge it’

How's that possible?
We do about 1000 miles a month, probably more, and the electric costs us around £40 ish. We charge on Intelligent Octopus tariff which is 7.5p/kw and around £2-3 a charge but it still mounts up. Obviously considerably cheaper than diesel or petrol for the same distance but not insignificant.
Unless you only do 100 miles a month or something! You actually should be able to tell exactly if you've got an app which I think most chargers do have.

I'm really not following your point. Either you've misunderstood my post or I can't understand yours.

Either way, I don't actually care what you're talking about.

I know there are cheaper tariffs for EVs. I can't see why you felt the need to tell me. But, as I said, I don't care about your need to explain pointless stuff to me.

Aren’t the private chargers all switched from inside so that you have to switch it on from inside the house?

You replied to a poster to say that you thought £2 was low for a charge as your sister managed to rack up £14 in a couple days. Another poster pointed out that an EV owner wouldn't pay that as they'd have a EV tariff. Really not hard to understand.

And £2 per charge is about right, obviously depends on the car.

With ours , you plug in the car and then have to approve the charge from an app on our phone , so nobody can just plug in and charge.

@BashfulClam don't worry about the pushback. Your comment was clear, and clearly with good intentions.
Best to just ignore.

Yes exactly. I thought I was in a paralell universe. Exactly as Steer yourself has said.

I honestly thought I was going slightly mad. lol!

There's no connection between the comments though. I do still think £2 sounds low. My neighbour tells me his costs more than this when we chat about this stuff (he's had an EV for years and the installed charger so I imagine he has the rate), and my sister's at home (where she has the Octopus EV rate) is also more than £2.

So, two comments, not linked. 1) £2 seems a bit low to me; separately 2) my sister cost £14 staying at my house. As she didn't go anywhere that would have been one charge.

I know ev rates exist. I still have no idea why someone thought I needed to be told that.

£2 a charge is not right. Your maths is wrong.

Most domestic chargers are 7kw.

That means for every hour you charge it is costing you 52.5p so if you charge for four hours then it would cost you £2.10 but you will only have partially charged the car (28kw). Most cars would require much more than that. A very small EV might be about 60kw for a full charge. A tesla model s or model x is 100kw. My BMW is 180kw.

So the PP saying it costs "nothing" is clearly wrong.

The poster with the sister is closer - if her sister had a mid range EV then £14 over two days is about right if she charged it from low to full a couple of times (edited to add or if she charged during the day on the higher rate)

Sorry I wasn't clear - it does cost us about £2 a charge but that's not a full 'tank' as such - we tend to do top up charges. Regardless of whether you do top up charges or run the battery right down, we average £35-45 a month for approx 1000 miles. See attached screenshot, this was our January usage.

It was perfectly clear to me and others on this thread 🙄.

and if she keeps at it tell her it’s £25 a charge and give your bank details for her to transfer prior to use. because you know, it cost a lot to install and energy prices are so high now.

I might consider if they offered to pay, but it’s still a slippery slope if you have to move cars around though. Ok once in a while. Regularly, no.

being an EV owner has lots of benefits. It costs a lot upfront though so to reap those benefits you should stump up the cash