Money Moral Dilemma: Should I ask for money if people charge their electric cars when they visit?

directdebits

If they are affluent enough to afford an electric vehicle, they can afford to pay for the electricity to charge it. If you drove to their house in your petrol/diesel vehicle would you ask them to cover the cost of your fuel home?

PerryMason

Of course they should chip in.... Not only are you paying for their charge, there is an inherent danger with "granny chargers" which plug into a standard 3 pin plug, so you're also taking a risk of fire.
Unless they offer payment, the answer is "sorry, but NO"

Edina_Typhoon

I'm amused that so many people assume the owner of a petrol vehicle won't have an EV charging point.  Most new-builds have EV points.  Mine does and I have a petrol vehicle.  Or perhaps the previous owners of his home installed an EV point.  Would he be asking if it wasn't an option to charge an EV somehow?

Jenni_D

Herzlos said:

I believe all new builds need to come with charging ports now, but you can charge an EV from a standard 3-pin socket though it's pretty slow (2kw instead of 8kw).

abdam said:

I don't have an electric vehicle so I'm not sure how you can tell how much they use but hopefully someone here knows that and can say how to know how much to ask from them 

The car will tell you how much was used. Even if you only have percentage before and percentage after, you can make a pretty good guess based on the battery size.

Exactly that. My MG4 SE SR has a usable capacity of 50.8 kWh. If I put in 50% charge overnight on a granny lead then that's 25.4 kWh. As efficiency is about 80% (through empirical testing) then that's 31.75 kWh delivered. At circa 27p per kWh then that's £8.57 charge cost. It's easy to calculate.  

Mr.Generous

EV owners, I'm interested in the "real world range" comments. Whenever I go on a day trip, family visit, wedding, etc of any great distance there is always some kind of traffic problem. It's got progressively worse each year. Would you really try and risk a journey with a 10 mile contingency? I'm only guessing, but would being stuck in miles of slow moving traffic affect the range? If it was dark and cold, lights and heating might be on. In an ICE vehicle traffic knocks the MPG right down, worst case scenario I fill up. In 40 years of driving I've ran out of fuel once. (ok, ok I was young and stupid - it was a Mini Metro if that helps date things) - However I've seen flat EV's several times in the last few months. I'm wondering if next time the motorways are stuffed by snow they will be double stuffed because quite a number of EV's will be locked up stuck in a live lane with no juice.

WellKnownSid

Mr.Generous said:

I'm only guessing, but would being stuck in miles of slow moving traffic affect the range? If it was dark and cold, lights and heating might be on. In an ICE vehicle traffic knocks the MPG right down, worst case scenario I fill up. 

In my hybrid - motorway speeds are around 60mpg, miles of slow moving traffic seem to get closer to 80mpg.

EVs similarly tend to benefit from slow-moving traffic for similar reasons.

Cold is more complicated - this is where some of that wasted heat from the ICE gets recycled into the cabin, albeit not that efficiently.  At the same time batteries can become less effective.

I was always taught to check my T's and P's (remember those?) plus remaining fuel before entering a slip road - regardless of whether you're stuck on a motorway through a lack of burnable oil or a lack of motivated electrons, it is the driver that's at fault not the prevailing traffic conditions.

WellKnownSid

To answer the original question.

What about the electrical safety angle?

I would not dream of offering up a BS1363 socket outlet to anyone, nor would I ask.  Who would pay if the socket (whose terminals were tightened 40 years ago by the apprentice who was rushing because they were about to clock off) - melted / caught fire / burned down the house due to the 10A load?  Not worth it for 8mph of charge.

It would be different if there was already an existing 7kW/11kW EV charging point - this is likely to have been professionally installed, be safe for both driver and householder, and result in a meaningful boost.

Goudy

silverwhistle said:

Goudy said:

Yet here's another thread with EV owners explaining the need to charge cheaply at someone home as elsewhere is expensive and inconvenient. 

I can't work out which is correct and why do posters get labelled anti EV for suggesting something EV owners admit to needing to do.

Did you actually read my post properly? I went over 300 miles to visit my friend. I did not plug in at her house although she offered me the opportunity and I did not need to. It is not a question of _need_, which you keep on harping on about.

I actually agree with you and my whole point is about not needing to charge like this.

I presume a few years ago when EV charging infrastructure and EV's were in their infancy, yes there might have been call for this sort of charging, but the fact some are discussing this now with over 50,000 public chargers and many EV owners agreeing there is a requirement for this, does point to it still being an accepted or preferred way to charge still.

I may be "harping on" but it appears others skim read posts, can't make distinctions, get the wrong end of the stick or just don't agree with my opinion, the last is fair enough.

There are plenty of discussions regarding EV ownership and I admit I had been schooled in a few areas regarding their use (mainly from the few, not the many), but now it turns out some of that might not have been correct.

I would like to swap to an EV and have for a while but there are some reasons that make that difficult, mainly home charging, but now I have another.

It seems to be that to charge away from home is more of an inconvenience than some of owners have let on. From posts already on this thread, that seems to be due to time and costs.

Due to the considerable hike in price to charge away from home now seems obvious EV owners just don't like it. I don't know why as we're told they are so cheap to run anyway, why would an owner baulk at the occasional fast charge at a higher price.
Some but not all appearing happy to granny charge from a friends house because of this, judging from the posts.

I've given my opinion on the original question:
"Given the massive rise in energy prices over the last couple of years, I've been wondering whether I should ask family and friends to contribute to my bills when they charge their electric cars at my home when they visit? I have a petrol car and when l visit others I obviously wouldn’t ask them to fill it up for me, so I’m not sure what the right thing to do is."

My opinion is the question should be irrelevant today. You might not like that, it's just an opinion.

Someone has chosen a certain type of car and as such accepted the fact they are reasonable for adding it's fuel, it doesn't matter what fuel source it uses. 
I think that is an unreasonable assumption to make.

The charging infrastructure in years gone might not have been in place but today we're are told there is enough to make EVs viable and it is growing day by day. Even the consideration of time has been negated with fast and super fast chargers.
I think that is true enough.

There are some legacy cases which we might now consider "edge cases".
Old EVs with poor batteries and limited range.
We all seem to accept that.

I don't doubt that these older EV's still have some use but make the point that these might not be viable option for these sorts of trips as there are more convenient forms of transport, even other EV's. Often it's suggested owners of this type of EV use other forms of transport.
That does seem the general consensus on this forum.

Many use different forms of transport to get to different places, you wouldn't normally try cycling to Benidorm for a weeks holiday but you would perhaps fly.
So I think it's correct to suggest these old EV's might not be viable for the sort of trips that would require the inconvenience of repeated charges.
That seems logical to me.

Brisbaneroad

If I had an EV, which I don't, I'd do it another way. Say to my host, "I'm just going to pop down to the nearest charging station, see you in an hour (or more if I have to wait for a port). Then they'll say, "don't be silly, you can charge it here". Sorted. 

Debbieman

If I were visiting I would NEVER dream of asking my hosts to pay for my fuel!  Electricity is just that, Fuel!  I understand that due to the limitation of electric cars that they need refuelling more often and so would happily pay my hosts for the use of their electric!  Imaging the cost if you have several visitors week asking the same?