Is charging electric car at holiday house "theft"?
Is charging electric car at holiday house "theft"?
One problem for holidaymakers renting electric cars is that the charging infrastructure in rural areas isn't as thorough as it is on the UK's motorways.
Airbnb owner claims holiday makers running cables out the window is theft if electricity.
Speaking to the Mirror, Amanda said: “It’s not just the cost – it’s also about safety. Charging a battery using a three-pin plug can take around 30 hours.
“That’s a significant amount of power flowing through a standard household socket for an extended period of time.”
You have circuit breakers specifically if it's using too much power.
While this is true, extended high current usage through a 3 pin plug isn't ideal - especially if the house wiring is a bit old and imperfect (and the breaker won't trip until imperfect old wiring breaks down). It's generally not recommended to regularly charge cars off standard 3 pin plugs, although a one off usage will probably be just fine.
Don't you have 240v mains power in the UK? Trying to charge a car off 120v only adds 3 miles of range per hour in the US so I had to have a dedicated circuit installed. It might be the same in the UK for amperage reasons. What's a three pin plug?
AFAIK (and i could be totally wrong here; 3 phase is where my knowledge of electricity takes a sharp dip!) you can get up to 480V total on a 3 phase circuit in the US… 3 phase is what a lot of dedicated car charging circuits would run off
i had heard that US properties get 3 phase power by default and a lot of your circuits are split between the phases, where a lot of 230/240V countries get a single phase, and that you have certain 240V circuits for speciality things like clothes driers that operate somehow using multiple phases at once? or that could be total nonsense misremembering
… but also, houses in 240V countries (i’m in australia for example and we have 240) can also get 3 phase, and that’s often what’s added for electric vehicles
A three pin plug is just the UK standard plug, it has three pins on it, with the top pin being longer than the other two which engages firsts and prevents electrocution. They are also fused instead of the actual wall socket.
Yeah circuit breakers are there to protect the cables in the wall. Only the newer ones protect you and the cables.
Oh no! It takes 30 hours to charge the car, it must be dangerous! Lol it takes 30 hours because it's charging at a safe rate
I leave the ceiling fan on all the time so I guess I'm paying tens of thousands
It’s not theft unless the owner specified in the conditions of the rental that car’s couldn’t be charged at the property. (Even then “Theft” is a strong word!)
That being said - there is obviously a big difference in charging your phone and charging a car and really we are at a point where this should be clear in all holiday rental agreements one way or another.
I don’t think the owner would be happy if someone just turned on all the taps in the house and left them running for the entirety of their stay. There is a sort of “fair use” which is assumed (if not actually in writing)
Question comes if car charging should always be assumed “fair use” or is that above and beyond? Or is it a gray area that just “depends”.. Much better for everyone if all this is made as clear as possible in the agreement right at the beginning.
I'm sure the courts would agree it's not theft, but it really is taking the piss: a typical UK home uses on the order of 10kWh per day - and an electric car can easily take 60kWh to charge. This isn't like charging a mobile phone which is basically noise - it can mean someone staying for 5 days can easily end up using twice what the reasonable expectation for electricity use was.
Having said that, if I were the owner of a holiday home, I'd probably install a proper electric car charger as a selling point and I'm sure it would be possible to set the daily rate for the property to cover the cost of charging a car.
Turning all the taps and leaving them running actually cost more...
It seems like the obvious thing to do would be to get a metred EV charging point and bill the tenant separately. There are even grant schemes to help pay for the cost.
It's not like EVs are going away. Every house with a driveway is likely to have one eventually. She might as well get ahead of the curve.
Alternatively I remember when I was a kid my grandparents would spend several weeks in a holiday let that had a coin operated meter for the electric, we had to keep feeding it coins to keep getting power, surely they could do the same thing these days.
Ahaha, what? She provides electricity as part of her services, for free. WTF is this person smoking?
Just to pay devil's advocate for a moment - but let's imagine the house has oil heating (heating oil is basically diesel). Ignoring the problems of unpaid duty, given that the heating oil is provided as part of the holiday home's services, would it be theft if a guest filled up their diesel car from the heating oil tank? If that would be theft, why would (at least in the holiday home owner's opinion) it be unreasonable to not treat charging an electric car off the house supply in the same way, as clearly just as the heating oil isn't intended to be put in guests cars, the electricity isn't, either?
That's not the same, because fuel stations exist. You're expected to refuel at a fuel station, which can also be done nearly instantly. You do not leave your car.
An electric car is expected to be charged at home. You can charge them at work, or during a pit stop, but you CANNOT leave them at public charging places, and public charging varies a ton depending on location.
If there was a close by public charge station with overnight charging, sure, but there's not, and it's unreasonable for someone to expect a visitor to come and not recharge their car.
Are they supposed to wake up in the morning, drive to a public charger, and then sit there for 2 hours in the morning? No. No one does that. They drive home and charge over night if they're able to make it home.
I used to live in a house which used real diesel for heating. It was in a different country though. But the thing was that we had a special diesel storage. Meaning that the amount of fuel was limited. If I'd rent you such a house, I would put only as much fuel as you need to keep you warm during your stay. If you refuel your car with it, then you'll freeze to death at -30°. Your choice, mate, lol.
We once stayed at an Airbnb in Florida. The property owners were not local. They had an employee come give us an orientation to the house upon check in. During the check-in he had us read the electric meter. When we left we had to read the meter again. The electric rate was in the rental contract so it became part of our final bill. It was a little strange but it made sense that we would pay for what we used.
🤣 I really, really don't get the appeal of airbnb... It's like the worst part of homeownership, while also paying hotel prices. From cleaning rooms to now paying for electricity... What is even the point? Not to mention whenever I check the prices they are basically on par with hotels. Absolutely bananas.
It used to be a cheap and awesome alternative to hotels. You could rent a house for the price of a hotel. Or rent a room for far cheaper than a hotel. Now, greed took over, everyon wanted to get in on it, and it is much less reliable and trustworthy than it was before. I don't even check AirBNB anymore, just opt for hotels
Depends on where you live and what you rent. Here, in France, it's a lot cheaper to rent a full house for a week vacation for 2 families (let's say 4 adults 5 kids) than renting 2 or 3 hotel rooms.
Also at Airbnb you have a full house with commodities which you don't at an hotel. So to the price of the room you need to add restaurants and laundry costs.
There are alternatives in France, other renting networks which predate Airbnb. But Airbnb killed the market because it's so easy for the renter and the owner
We had two families staying at a house with a pool. We had a kitchen and plenty of room for everyone. I still think it makes sense in certain cases. The extra electric charge at this property was out of the ordinary, but I suspect the pool had a heater which used a lot of power.
I get the safety concerns but does she say "no charging cars" in the terms and conditions. I am not sure this is theft any more than charging mobile phones and tablets would be. If she is worried about how much electricity then take meter readings and make it accepted terms that all electricity is to be paid for. What if one guest choses to use the oven for a five course meal. Is that theft of electricry
IMO the electric oven is an appliance of the house, can be used at your better convenience. But the consumption of your car, was it by fuel or by electricity by charging a 80 - 100 kWh car battery, should not be supported by the property owner.
And you are comparing a phone battery with a car battery, I get that on paper it looks like that same but obviously this is messed up comparison. Sounds like comparing filling water for pasta cooking and filling a 40k L swimming pool…
In the end, the answer will be that renting prices will increase to support the extra electricity cost. And those not having an electric car will pay more for nothing more.
I get it's different, but is it theft. If there was a wattmeter and I filled an inflatable swimming pools every day would that be theft... What if I brought an inflatable hot tub and ran the heater for the week. If electricity is included in the rate that implies the guest can use what they want
Charging an electric car via the mains rather than an official charging station takes much longer and can cost homeowners hundreds of pounds.
It doesn't typically cost any more to charge slowly than it does to charge fast. Unless you're on like an economy 7 plan with cheaper rates overnight, but even then charging at the same time would incur the same cost per kWhr. If anything it's far cheaper than any paid charging station.
I think there's a typo. It should be hundredths of pound. It's way cheap to charge at home. I pay $8/mo in US.
Then she should get a proper charging point put in she can monitor and bill, it's not like the shift to electric cars had snuck up on people.
This is an easy problem to solve. In many countries, tenants pay for the power they use. They record the meter on arrival and when leaving. The rate is in the agreement. I wonder why she doesn’t just do that.
That's so weird. What countries do that? Even with the AC cranked and the windows open, airbnb hosts are still profiting a shit ton at the end of the stay.
I would refuse to stay at a place that records my usage. I mean doesn't it cost like 15 dollars to charge a Tesla from dead to full? I'm sure they could find a way to spare that money in their $300 per night stay lol.
Plus it's not like it's an every day occurrence. Seems insane to me. The guests that use a bit more will get balanced out by the guests that basically use none. Whenever I used an airbnb, it's been strictly for sleeping. I pretty much use no lights, and go straight to bed.
I own a holiday home rental in Denmark. That’s the norm here for holiday homes. Short AirBnB stays don’t do it though. I think it’s the norm in Germany and the Nordics too. Power is much more expensive in Europe than in most places in the U.S., so that might be the reason. Charging your Tesla could cost closer to US$30, depending on time of day and model. Also tenants are using lights and heating and dryers and all kinds of other appliances. So them paying for only what they use encourages efficient energy use which is great for the environment, but also allows us to keep rental prices down. For reference, power for a week’s stay is typically between US$50 in summer up to US$80 in winter.
What is that, like the equivalent of 2 euros on the electric bill?
No, I would say 1kWh being 30-50p and the car battery, say, 50-100kWh, maths would end up being between 0.3*50=15 and 0.5*100=50. Not insurmountable, but definitely not nothing.
I'm looking at my Tesla app right now in the charging section and I average about 15 dollars a month of electricity, at 14c a kw/h.
So somewhere around 0.50 cents a day in added cost. This landlord is just being fussy and fearful of the "new".
Like people back in the day thinking light switches could shock you dead for flipping them.
*I looked it up for the area specifically and their electricity is up to 40 cents equivalent dollars a kilowatt hour, so it could be up to 3.50 or so bucks a day if it's charging non stop. Electricity is expensive over there and I stand corrected.
Technically, no, as in the UK, you can't steal electricity... you can only abstract electricity, which is an offence in its own right. (IANAL)
I'll get my coat.
I’m not sure it is theft. But I’d certainly ask the owner before doing it as an act of politeness
I think it's about the scale of things. I have actually seen properties that ask electric car owners notify them, and charge if they use an excessive amount.
Charging your phone, you'd probably struggle to use more than 10p of electricity over a week's stay.
If I have a 30KWh battery in my car, and charge half of it a night for 6 nights, that's £30 in electric.
It's possibly not theft, more akin to leaving the oven on constantly, but it's cheeky as fuck to do it without checking first.Additionally, a property that hasn't ever considered electric car charging may not have electrics that stand up to hours of 3KW+ draw on top of the base load.
Technically though they're paying for the use of the property which presumably also includes electricity use. Legally I'm not sure where the line is drawn, presumably there is some kind of fair use usage clause but I'm not sure where that would be.
Airbnb is theft too.
Property is theft comrade