Airbnb

[DebbieP64]

I got told off by airbnb owner for granny charging my MG5, in Oxford. Anyone had this experience? Is there any policy on airbnb. Together with my OVO charge anytime tarriff at home, the whole trip cost me £3 for 300 miles!

Some Airbnb owners are not covered by their Insurance or their Electrical wiring may not be passed to charge an EV. This is what we have been told

 

[BarryH]

I always ask immediately after making the reservation by messaging the host explaining that I have an EV and saying each host has a different policy and what would be their policy if I were to hook up for a few hours overnight and of course I would be prepared to pay. The chances are that they have never considered it and when they do there is one of three reactions: 1, that will be fine you could plug it in at... 2, How much would it use? (chances are they've no idea and think it will cause a local blackout or fry their house wiring). 3, they have a policy which is either flat out no or certainly there's an outside socket you can use.

It boils down to being considerate and prepared to engage in a little education.. Earlier this summer we state at 2 AirBnBs and the first asked lots of questions and was clearly ill-informed. They asked how big the car battery was and How long it would take and questions about extension leads etc. I explained that compared to a dedicated EV Wall charger the adapter with a 13A plug was really only a slow trickle of a charge drawing less than a kettle but more than a toaster and roughly equivalent to the electric oven they had in the property. I explained that typically when staying at an AirBnB that we'd in the past just topped up 2 or 3 times during the week for a couple of hours in the evening if we'd not come across a suitable public charger in the course of travels and that having the facility even if we didn't use it would make our stay with them a much more pleasant and enjoyable experience. It got a very positive reaction and as it happened we came across an Instavolt charger and didn't need to use the facility. When we spoke to the host on leaving, she said her husband had been considering it and thought by next year they'd have an EV Charger point installed.

The following week, we stayed at a lodge where the owner had an external 3-pin socket and said we could charge there and let them know at the end of the week how much we'd used and leave money to cover it based on 17p/kWh which was great so we chartered to 80 overnight. Turned out that both her father and brother had a EVs.

 

[tkmaxx5]

Hi All

Not wishing to re-open the ethical debate above (interesting as it is ) but on another note, how do people work out how many kWh you draw down in this scenario? We are staying at an Airbnb soon and want to offer to pay for costs of plugging our car in (they have an outside plug) but wasn't sure how people work out what they used. Is it as simple as:

percentage battery charged * battery capacity / 100

(eg if we added 40% charge, our battery is 61kwh we'd have drawn 24kwh from their supply?)

assume it's as simple as that but wanted to check I wasn't missing something!

 

[Gadget Geek]

The MG5 has a usable battery capacity of 57.4kWh, so 1% is 0.574kWh. There will be some losses, but if you multiply the % of battery charged by 0.574 and then by the owners pence/kWh, I don't think you will be far off.

I personally would round up and pay a bit more for the convenience and the owners kindness for letting me do it.

 

[Ruislip Resident]

I'd then add on an extra bit for any losses or eg if a price worked out at say £22 ( from kwh calculated used in the charge
x unit cost per kwh) give them £25. That's what I have done when staying at friends or families houses and used the granny charger cable.

 

[EVsince2016]

For the MG5 I always do 57 kW x % added + 10% = power used