Can I charge my electric car?

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And many people are… I ask my guests not to charge between 4-9 when my rates are higher, they gladly comply.

I think in general, EV drivers get it, they understand the costs of charging and do not want to over burden the hosts.

I think the clueless careless EV owner is the exception not the rule, for now anyway. As EV’s become more widely adopted it will inevitably change.

RR

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Note I was responding to the comment that EV owners won’t leave the heat on high while they are out. I definitely know people who brand themselves as “caring about the environment” while doing lots of things that are bad for the environment, like driving around a lot. My environmental scientist friend loves to needle me about eating meat but she loves a pointless drive in her fuel efficient car and she also typically lives relatively far from her workplace resulting in a long commute.

But I won’t dispute that many EV owners really are taking a variety of steps to be more eco-friendly.

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I agree that the incremental cost of charging is minimal and comparable to a guest with a large family that does 4 loads of laundry a day. I wouldn’t charge either guest extra.

My listing has a dedicated 40A Level 2 charger which I thought would be a big draw (no pun intended). Not a single guest has used it.

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They will. It may take awhile but within the next few years I think hosts who normally have guests arrive by car are going to see more and more people with EVs, so everyone should have a plan in place for how to deal with it.

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IMO, supplying fuel to a guest’s vehicle is not part of the nightly cost, regardless of the cost of the fuel. I suspect if you had posted that a guest went into your garage and used all the gas from your two-gallon gas can without offering to reimburse you, a lot of hosts would say that was wrong. The other examples (long showers, multiple loads of laundry) are all usage of typical amenities expected to be included in the rate.

I agree with @KKC that you need a plan. Either raise your rates a bit (although you should do that if you can anyway), or specify in your house rules that you do NOT allow EV charging at your property and what the penalty is, or specify the nightly rate (say $5 a night for their stay) and have a process to monitor it.

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As EVs become more ubiquitous, I suspect that many guests will consider it “usage of typical amenities”, even though, as you rightly state, it’s not much different than helping themselves to a can of gas.

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Exactly! We price based on two guests and the normal expenses we would incur to do so. If a guest wants to book for four, we are happy to do so with extra guest fees to compensate for the additional expense. I think this should be handled the same way.

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I’ve known people who claimed to be against car culture, saying they would never own a car. Yet they hitchhiked and asked other people for rides, so they were depending on the car culture for transportation, they just weren’t paying to have a car themselves.

If they were truly against car culture, they wouldn’t have gone anywhere they couldn’t get to on public transportation, by horseback, or walking.

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It’s no different. It’s fuel for travel, not accommodation.
I understand your point that it will become expected, as many stores offer free EV charging while you shop as a way to get people to shop there. And I’m sure some hosts offer free charging as an incentive to book. That’s their choice But guests shouldn’t assume they have the right to charge their EV without the host’s approval, just as they can’t use the washing machine without the host’s approval.

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Yes, I meant “not much different” in terms of guest perception rather than reality. I’m sure there are guests who would never consider going into the garage and helping themselves to a can of gas, because they would rightly think of it as theft. But wouldn’t make the mental leap of considering plugging their EV into your electric to be the same thing.

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Just as some hotels offer a lot of things that aren’t accommodation like free breakfast, fitness rooms and swimming pools, sometimes bars and restaurants, some will and already do, offer chargers. Some Airbnb hosts will follow, some won’t.

I thought about looking into it since I think that would be great for the road tripping kind of guest I have. However, I’ve cut way back on my hosting and it might not pay for itself in my remaining time here. I’m thinking more and more about selling my home. I thought this would be by aging in place home but things change.

If an automaker comes along and offers free chargers, I’d get one.

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UPDATE: This guest stayed with us last night. He had a Tesla with a 75kW battery, so it cost us about $8.50 of electricity (that no other guest in over 1,000 trips has ever used or asked for) to charge his car. As a side note, they went out to eat and were away from the guesthouse for about 4 hours. While they were gone, they left: Every. Single. Light. On! Seriously, it’s like they walked around making sure every light was on. Just to finish with a flair - they also left two outside lights on all night. No good deed goes unpunished!

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You might want to validate this estimate of $8.50 of electricity.

I had read awhile ago – and now I cannot find my source – that the costs are not really as simple as taking the battery size (here 75 kW) and multiply the electricity cost rate (here about $.12/kwH) to get an estimated cost of about $9 – though I’ve just looked at a dozen or so sites that do the calculation just that way.

Instead, this article that I cannot locate, said:
o energy into the car will be greater than energy received. – it’s not perfectly efficient; I don’t recall the estimates of efficiency but it depended in part
– on ambient temperature (takes more energy in cold weather),
– on the car (some vehicles, like Teslas, are more efficient; some run a fan or heater in the process of charging which makes the process more efficient but also demonstrates that the amount of electricity ‘out’ from the outlet is less than the amount of electricity stored in the battery), and
– depends on the level of charge, that is, the amount of electricity needed to get the battery charged from 60% to 80% will be different from (and less than) the amount needed to get the battery from 80% to 100% (will take much more to get from 80% to 100%, and – an aside – the article said that that (getting to 90-100%) would also shorten the battery’s life).

Anyway, I don’t recall the magnitude of these variables, but at the time they did not impress me as trivial. If I had to guess at my recollection, I would say could be in the 20%-30% or so ballpark, maybe more.

I just wanted to bring this to your attention in case you actual electricity charges were much more than expected.

I’m not sure what the remedy would be if the electricity costs were much greater – for example, whether it’s cost effective to put a meter on that circuit charging the car to measure the actual amount of kWh used.

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Did they leave the heat on high too? Or is it AC time there? LOL.