EV Charger with Cost Recovery

[______]

Hi, we’d like to fit two 7kw EV chargers at our holiday let properties, ideally where a guest pays via an app or credit card .

Can anybody recommend one that’s reliable and works well?

[Discombobulate]

Simple way is to take a £15 deposit and use app on smart meter to measure what they use and bill at kWh x whatever you intend to charge and add to credit card accordingly.

[sjg]

Not that I’ve found. Depending on where it is in the market either just include it, or do a flat fee for the stay if people want to use it. Easy with the domestic smart chargers now to disable/enable remotely if you want to leave it off by default.

If you really want to charge for usage then either pull from the charge point’s app and bill the guest, or you can put a meter in line and read it off that.

I find working out the exact usage quite offputting as a guest though. If you’re not counting out how many towels they use or kg of gas for the bbq, why get all mean about charging? Most EV drivers won’t use as much power as you might think - they won’t arrive empty, and won’t be doing hundreds of miles every day, then just top up for the trip home.

[TheDeuce]

Include it in the stay. Why bother people with the complexity of having to worry about what something might cost or needing to make a seperate payment when you can fold it into the let price and have it appear as a 'freebie'?

The value is that you can, vs the competition, attract the growing % of holiday makers that have an EV and will love that they can charge when they arrive - those generally affluent people will consider the fact you have EV charging of very high value in their decision about where to stay. That value would surely exceed worrying about the exact cost, or if once in a blue moon someone does mega miles and charges every night and you end up with £20-30 less than expected. You'd probably gain a great review that was arguably worth far more...

Don't bother the customer when you can instead game the market.

[TheRainMaker]

Dead easy if it's just one user.

Our charger at work logs everything and you need a fob to turn the charger on.

Have a set price per kW, then at the end of the week do a screen grab of the app showing how much has been used.

Take a £50 deposit and give back anything that is not used, I would try and keep it as simple as possible.

[thebraketester]

Can’t you sign them up with zap map and get your guests to use them and pay for them via that?

Edited by thebraketester on Thursday 24th November 07:38

[______]

TheDeuce said:

Include it in the stay. Why bother people with the complexity of having to worry about what something might cost or needing to make a seperate payment when you can fold it into the let price and have it appear as a 'freebie'?

The value is that you can, vs the competition, attract the growing % of holiday makers that have an EV and will love that they can charge when they arrive - those generally affluent people will consider the fact you have EV charging of very high value in their decision about where to stay. That value would surely exceed worrying about the exact cost, or if once in a blue moon someone does mega miles and charges every night and you end up with £20-30 less than expected. You'd probably gain a great review that was arguably worth far more...

Don't bother the customer when you can instead game the market.

At the current (expected to increase) 34p kWh cap then it’s possible guests could easily be consuming up to £30-57 per day of electricity charging one or two electric cars. So in short giving it away free, or taking a £15 or £50 deposit doesn’t work.

Pretty simple not looking to profit, will fund the charger for flexibility, but guest wouldn’t simply be recharged for electric used or not if they didn’t use.

[______]

sjg said:

I find working out the exact usage quite offputting as a guest though. If you’re not counting out how many towels they use or kg of gas for the bbq, why get all mean about charging? Most EV drivers won’t use as much power as you might think - they won’t arrive empty, and won’t be doing hundreds of miles every day, then just top up for the trip home.

Can allow for all average usage profiles within weekly rental prices, however property can park multiple cars and a Tesla or equivalent could draw £50+ of electric per day. We are as far west as you can go and there’s lots to travel about and see each day, I’d not put a credit card in property to fund guest trips to petrol station and as a guest wouldn’t expect free car charging….

[Discombobulate]

[quote=__]

At the current (expected to increase) 34p kWh cap then it’s possible guests could easily be consuming up to £30-57 per day of electricity charging one or two electric cars. So in short giving it away free, or taking a £15 or £50 deposit doesn’t work.

Pretty simple not looking to profit, will fund the charger for flexibility, but guest wouldn’t simply be recharged for electric used or not if they didn’t use.

[/quote]

Depending on their car, that's 200-300 miles a day. You really think people will need / be able to use that?

[TheRainMaker]

Discombobulate said:

Depending on their car, that's 200-300 miles a day. You really think people will need / be able to use that?

If I know there is a charger at my destination I would plan accordingly, I could then turn up with a nearly empty battery.

This would cost @34p per kW £30, this is on the first day.

My car will do around 200-220 miles avarge per charge and you could easily do 400+ miles in a week so add on another £60.00

Then I would want a full charge when we left.

@34p per kW I could easily see myself using well over £90 in sparks at a holiday home.

I would have no problem whatsoever paying to use a destination charger at a holiday home, I really think people need to get the idea of "free" charging out of their heads TBH.

[DonkeyApple]

TheRainMaker said:

Discombobulate said:

Depending on their car, that's 200-300 miles a day. You really think people will need / be able to use that?

If I know there is a charger at my destination I would plan accordingly, I could then turn up with a nearly empty battery.

This would cost @34p per kW £30, this is on the first day.

My car will do around 200-220 miles avarge per charge and you could easily do 400+ miles in a week so add on another £60.00

Then I would want a full charge when we left.

@34p per kW I could easily see myself using well over £90 in sparks at a holiday home.

I would have no problem whatsoever paying to use a destination charger at a holiday home, I really think people need to get the idea of "free" charging out of their heads TBH.

That's the sort of thing you need to plan for, especially if it's a weekend booking. The client will aim to arrive empty, refill and then refill again to depart a day or two later fully charged. The one saving grace is that unlike toilet rolls, firewood, jams, sauces, cleaning products, cutlery etc they can't fill the boot with everything that isn't bolted down during their departure supermarket sweep.

[______]

DonkeyApple said:

TheRainMaker said:

Discombobulate said:

Depending on their car, that's 200-300 miles a day. You really think people will need / be able to use that?

If I know there is a charger at my destination I would plan accordingly, I could then turn up with a nearly empty battery.

This would cost @34p per kW £30, this is on the first day.

My car will do around 200-220 miles avarge per charge and you could easily do 400+ miles in a week so add on another £60.00

Then I would want a full charge when we left.

@34p per kW I could easily see myself using well over £90 in sparks at a holiday home.

I would have no problem whatsoever paying to use a destination charger at a holiday home, I really think people need to get the idea of "free" charging out of their heads TBH.

That's the sort of thing you need to plan for, especially if it's a weekend booking. The client will aim to arrive empty, refill and then refill again to depart a day or two later fully charged. The one saving grace is that unlike toilet rolls, firewood, jams, sauces, cleaning products, cutlery etc they can't fill the boot with everything that isn't bolted down during their departure supermarket sweep.

100%. Well we are as far west as you can go, house sleeps 6-8 and guests have come in 3 cars previously. So weekend guests would turn up near empty if it’s free rather than arriving charged, so that’s one full charge, then a couple of days touring would be 150-200 miles and a quick brim before heading back. Worse if you had two with EV’s. At £1800 week in the peak summer not a major issue, at £500 a week off peak when you pay 21% to letting agent, £80-100 for cleaning and laundry and £70 a week on gas and electric it doesn’t cost in to give it away free.

[DonkeyApple]

There must be PAYG EV chargers though? The entire holiday let market, car space renting market as well as employee/visitor parking market must be wanting or already using a solution?

[thebraketester]

DonkeyApple said:

There must be PAYG EV chargers though? The entire holiday let market, car space renting market as well as employee/visitor parking market must be wanting or already using a solution?

See my post above. It's possible.

[robbieduncan]

We have a Rolec charger at work that takes tokens. Each token gives you an hour. The receptionist dishes them out to those who have booked slots ensuring some sort of fair access and use.

If you have someone who cleans the unit they could empty the tokens from the charger and leave some sort of pre-agreed/paid amount?

[TheDeuce]

[quote=__]

DonkeyApple said:

TheRainMaker said:

Discombobulate said:

Depending on their car, that's 200-300 miles a day. You really think people will need / be able to use that?

If I know there is a charger at my destination I would plan accordingly, I could then turn up with a nearly empty battery.

This would cost @34p per kW £30, this is on the first day.

My car will do around 200-220 miles avarge per charge and you could easily do 400+ miles in a week so add on another £60.00

Then I would want a full charge when we left.

@34p per kW I could easily see myself using well over £90 in sparks at a holiday home.

I would have no problem whatsoever paying to use a destination charger at a holiday home, I really think people need to get the idea of "free" charging out of their heads TBH.

That's the sort of thing you need to plan for, especially if it's a weekend booking. The client will aim to arrive empty, refill and then refill again to depart a day or two later fully charged. The one saving grace is that unlike toilet rolls, firewood, jams, sauces, cleaning products, cutlery etc they can't fill the boot with everything that isn't bolted down during their departure supermarket sweep.

100%. Well we are as far west as you can go, house sleeps 6-8 and guests have come in 3 cars previously. So weekend guests would turn up near empty if it’s free rather than arriving charged, so that’s one full charge, then a couple of days touring would be 150-200 miles and a quick brim before heading back. Worse if you had two with EV’s. At £1800 week in the peak summer not a major issue, at £500 a week off peak when you pay 21% to letting agent, £80-100 for cleaning and laundry and £70 a week on gas and electric it doesn’t cost in to give it away free.

I think you're looking at worse case scenarios, which is wise to consider but I very much doubt you will, on average, see the sort of figures or behaviour in the examples above. Time will tell of course, and whatever the real average cost turns out to be, the relevance of that figure would depend entirely
on how many more bookings you might get as a result of having the chargers and how much you could also increase the rates by.

If I could promise you 20% more bookings and 10% more per booking if you installed a 'free' charger, would you take that deal?

Of course the %'s may not work out like that and, to be fair, as you're so far west, requiring a long drive for most guests, and there is a lot to drive around and visit, it could be the case that the charger is used particularly heavily very often. Also for all I know you're already nearly fully booked all year so might not see any benefit in making the properties more attractive to a growing EV market.

I'm just saying there may be an opportunity to at least initially test the water by rolling in the let price a guesstimated average cost of guests using the charger, increasing the let price a little to cover that figure off and see how it goes. And if it's clearly not working out well there is no reason you can't then move to the pay as you go model, as others have said, plenty of chargers with apps that show usage which can be deducted from a guests charger deposit.

Edited by TheDeuce on Thursday 24th November 13:39

[Grebby]

[quote=__]

Can allow for all average usage profiles within weekly rental prices, however property can park multiple cars and a Tesla or equivalent could draw £50+ of electric per day. We are as far west as you can go and there’s lots to travel about and see each day, I’d not put a credit card in property to fund guest trips to petrol station and as a guest wouldn’t expect free car charging….
[/quote]

Very easy to bypass.
Just ignore your chargers and costs and plug in the granny charger to a standard socket. Unless you are charging for general electric use by the kWh then you wouldn't see a penny.

Edited by Grebby on Thursday 24th November 13:07

[______]

Grebby said:

[quote=__]

Can allow for all average usage profiles within weekly rental prices, however property can park multiple cars and a Tesla or equivalent could draw £50+ of electric per day. We are as far west as you can go and there’s lots to travel about and see each day, I’d not put a credit card in property to fund guest trips to petrol station and as a guest wouldn’t expect free car charging….

Very easy to bypass.
Just ignore your chargers and costs and plug in the granny charger to a standard socket. Unless you are charging for general electric use by the kWh then you wouldn't see a penny.

Edited by Grebby on Thursday 24th November 13:07

That’s a risk for anybody providing holiday let accommodation currently, can be specifically prohibited within booking terms and / or an electrician could reduce amperage of breakers on ground floor sockets to stop them being used in that way. In our case it’d mean leaving the front door open and unplugging the Wi-Fi …..

I’d personally book somewhere with a charger as a bonus, but not think it unreasonable to cover costs of electricity.

As per posts already guests have a distorted view currently with energy crisis and whilst being frugal at home do expect to put heating up to 30’, cool the property by opening windows and do a full lot of washing before heading home…..

[DonkeyApple]

[quote=__]

As per posts already guests have a distorted view currently with energy crisis and whilst being frugal at home do expect to put heating up to 30’, cool the property by opening windows and do a full lot of washing before heading home…..
[/quote]

It's definitely bringing out the worst in the self entitled mob at the moment. Some of the stuff is comical around here. People who like to think they're respectable members of society who descend into petty larceny when they think no one is looking.

Don't know why the holiday let industry or the restaurant industry don't get round to doing what Uber understood they always needed to do which was to mark the customer for their ability to remain honest for a few days.

It won't be long until they're advertising a cash washing service on Facebook when they rent a holiday home.

Does your competition offer charging and are they generally burying the fee in the overall booking or explicitly? Ultimately, you generally need to just copy what everyone else is doing most of the time.

[TheDeuce]

It turns out the OP's username makes it impossible to quote them, makes reading this thread tricky!