Lodger wants a hybrid car - am I being unreasonable?

Ryan_Holden

Hi all

Could I ask your feedback on how I've handled this situation and some advice on what to do.

I (39M) have a lodger (24M) who has lived with me for 18 months and contributes £500 pcm to my house for living here and bills. He is an OK lodger, can be messy and is very lazy, never does any housework for the 'common' areas but I tolerate this as he is a gamer and is more often than not isolated in his room. As a gamer he does use a lot of electricity and he is very inefficient with water but again, I tolerate this because he is usually upstairs.

He approached me earlier this week about wanting to buy a PHEV car and offering to contribute to the electricity bill. I said that if he found out how much it would cost to charge we could talk about it.

Today he told me he's going to view a car tonight and see what happens. I explained to him that we still haven't had the conversation about what the costs would be and that he needed to get that information and we could talk first. He seemed very disappointed.

We are an E7 household with off peak being 12:30 - 07:30, so ideally I would only want the car charging in those hours. But granting him access to charge his car would mean granting him access to my garage (not covered on the lodger agreement and where I keep my own classic car and spare parts).

The more I think about it, the more I don't think I want to grant him access to the garage. It is my little space that I often spend time in. Equally, I'm not at all sure how I would fairly track his electricity usage so he didn't over pay me or under pay me. But if I don't grant this, I will be affecting his life and denying him the car he wants.

Am I being unreasonable? And can anyone offer me any advice on what they might do?

Thank you

kipperman

Reading between the lines I think your lodger is on the edge of what you can tolerate. I suspect that conceding to his demands is only going to move him over that red line and make you resent him - especially given that he has ignored your request to discuss prior to going ahead and viewing a car ( which makes it almost a fait accompli for him)

Irrespective of the technical details of monitoring electricity consumption I would say no. You say that you will be affecting his life - what about your life?

silvercar

It’s a hybrid, he doesn’t need to plug it in at all. If you are going to allow him electricity, assuming you don’t have a dedicated charger, any 3 pin socket will do, it doesn’t need to be under cover or in your garage. Do you have any outdoor sockets? Extension leads aren’t recommended long term, but for the odd charge a solid extension lead would work. As for measuring the amount used, his car will show him the amount added to the battery. You could add 10% as a rough guide to the amount showing on the car as they seems to use some kWH in delivering the juice to the car (from experience comparing my charge point app with my car app). You can work out the cost from your electricity bill. Totally reasonable to restrict usage to night time charging, though if he’s paying the point is moot.

MobileSaver

Ryan_Holden said:

 can anyone offer me any advice on what they might do?

One option might be to have an additional electricity meter fitted that supplies an outside charging socket (ideally it would also measure his gaming electric usage but that may be more trouble than it's worth.)

You can get the meter for under £40 but of course will need to pay a competent electrician to fit it. If the lodger can afford an electric car then I don't think it's unreasonable that they also pay the meter/installation costs.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07X8H8KCS/

Fredw56

Two ideas.
Charging a hybrid for a regular socket is done. My son and daughter in law have had a hybrid for five years and just charge from the charger that came with the car by slinging it out of the nearest window and plugging it into a 3 pin socket. The car works fine and the house hasn’t burned down. If you do the maths it would take and extremely long time to recover the cost of have a dedicated charger installed for hybrid with a small battery,

We used to have a motor home. When we used a hook up from someone’s home we carried in in-line plug-in meter to record how much electric we have used so we could pay them accordingly. It wasn’t expensive so your lazy lodger could buy one, charge through that and pay you back for the power he has used. 

prettyandfluffy

Just say you've thought it over and sorry, the answer is no.  Point him in the direction of public chargers (supermarket? Public car park?).

Veteransaver

It won't use a lot of electricity, they have fairly small batteries. Might be easier just to agree to something like an extra £20/£30 a month on his rent.
Encourage him to only charge on E7 too.
Do you have a smart meter you can get half hourly readings off?

ProDave

This is a wider problem that will face most of society in due course.

When EV's become the normal type of car, it will become normal practice when visiting a friend or relative to expect to plug in and charge your car while you are there before returning home.

Many if not most will not like the concept of you paying to power someone elses car, so payment will be expected 

Keep_pedalling

Unless he is also willing to pay for the installation of a dedicated EV charging port then I would not allow him to charge at home. A charging point is not only safer, it can be used to log the the amount energy that has gone into the car. 

RHemmings

ProDave said:

This is a wider problem that will face most of society in due course.

When EV's become the normal type of car, it will become normal practice when visiting a friend or relative to expect to plug in and charge your car while you are there before returning home.

Many if not most will not like the concept of you paying to power someone elses car, so payment will be expected 

As batteries get bigger over time, this will become less and less of an issue. Given the speed of battery progress and the speed of EV adoption, I would expect that bigger batteries will obviate the above problem before EVs are the normal type of car. 

Returning to the main point of the thread, I agree that payment should be expected, and that this should be formalised as this whole thing looks like a big drama and argument waiting to happen. 

theartfullodger

"""   have a lodger (24M) who has lived with me for 18 months and contributes £500 pcm to my house for living here and bills. He is an OK lodger, can be messy and is very lazy, never does any housework for the 'common' areas but I tolerate this as he is a gamer and is more often than not isolated in his room. As a gamer he does use a lot of electricity and he is very inefficient with water but   """"



I'd not continue any arrangement with this ... Time to evict..