Guests charging electric car with our house electricity.!!

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cleanforum
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Guests charging electric car with our house electricity.!!

Post by cleanforum »

Heres a new one. We have dutch guests staying at the villa and have discovered that after just 6 days that they have used over 200KW of electricity.
This morning I noticed that they drive a Mitsubishi hybred electric car.
They also came equipped I notice with an extension lead.

So I am a bit slow at times but it seems obvious to me that they are charging the
bl***dy car with my electricity!!!

Be warned. I have no proof of this but fully intend to check the meter usage and
electricity bill and stop the lot from their deposit when the time comes.
Has anyone else come across this practice??
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

How does it say in your T&Cs anything about no charging of cars?
I wonder how they done the journey, it is a long way from NL
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cleanforum
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Post by cleanforum »

Yes, I am new to this electic car buisness casasantoestevo as so it seems are you.

These cars are hybrid. They have a mixture of electric and petrol engines.

If you read about the new Mitsubishi Outlander PBEV you can see that it has a range of charging and conventional uses/mixes.

So they drove from Holland using petrol I presume.

Normal Kw use for our house at this time of year is 50kw max
they have used 300Kw in just 6 days.

To me it seems quite cleaar that they are charging the car I have seen the extension lead they have been using and wondered what that might have been for, although it was hidden under a sun lounger when I saw it.

So in posting I was just trying to give a heads up to others. I don´t think this will be the last we hear of this as these cars are definately the way things are going.

How to offer/manage the charging/fees etc in the future will be the issue..
Last edited by cleanforum on Thu Apr 28, 2016 7:09 pm, edited 3 times in total.
ianh100
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Post by ianh100 »

We had a friend stay at our place with an electric car (not hybrid) and it did use quite a bit to charge it up.

It sounds like this car is a hyrbid so it has a normal engine and small batteries to supliment. Some of these can be plugged in and charged others not. If they have plugged it in it will have used more power but not the same as a pure electric like a Tesla with massive batteries and 300 mile range.

Its and interesting question as we will all see increasing numbers of guests with electric cars. In the UK we can get a free or subsidised charging point, I did consider this until I thought about the cost of energy use.

Perhaps we all need to add a note in our T&C? But how do you manage as an off site manager like we are? I have a remote energy monitor so can see the cost of each days electricity. Perhaps that is the answer.
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Post by Sam V »

Oh look, the extension lead has been left out under the sun lounger, I'll pop it back in my shed!

Alternatively siphon off their petrol! :lol:

Oh, and take a phot of the car as proof it's a hybrid.
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Post by CSE »

Surprising that in Spain the normal house supply will take the load the car needs to charge.
We simple do not offer charging point for a car. cars cannot get that near to the house. But now we are warned we should make that clearer, cycles too.
The car does come with a 5 M cable. So that answers Sam's solution. :(
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Post by Essar »

It's one thing charging a lap top or iPhone but a 8l00dy car, they are taking the 91$$, and hiding the charging lead under chairs - greedy 8u99er$.

They must know the high usage of electicity the charging takes otherwise they wouldn't be trying to hide it. I would certainly check the usage and charge them, unacceptable behaviour without asking first.
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Post by CSE »

Seems a crap piece of kit to try and save the earth. Here are some facts given on this page.
http://www.mitsubishi-cars.co.uk/outlan ... rging.aspx
With a complete charge taking just 9.8KWh* of electricity and an EV range of up to 32 miles, the Outlander PHEV can run on its EV battery for a fraction of the cost of conventional petrol or diesel.
You can charge your plug-in hybrid or electric car directly from a standard mains socket, though we recommend that you have a qualified electrician inspect your home's electric wiring.
The Outlander PHEV comes equipped with a 5 metre charging cable for connection to a standard plug socket.
Empty to full charge time (approx.): 5 hours
Testing your home electrics
If you plan to charge your Mitsubishi plug-in vehicle from a standard 13A, 3 pin socket, we recommend that a qualified electrician check the circuit you intend on using. This is a safety precaution only but it is a good idea. Extension cables and multi-plug adapters must not be used for charging your Mitsubishi plug-in vehicle.
Did they have your house checked? :wink:
If you do charge them remember that the price fluctuates quite a bit over a day Almost 3 cents per unit difference, depending on time.
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Post by cleanforum »

Actually the reason I sort of discovered this is because they called me up to the house after the circuits had tripped. I thought it was because of overuse of cookers etc so thought nothing much of it.

Today however I guess something nagged at me and I so decided to check the meter. Something did not seem right with them. Then later I checked out the car just out of curiosity to see what exactly it was and only then put 2 and 2 together. I´m a bit slow I know.

Ho Hum..Just two days to go with the rental. I prefer not to be in conflict with the guests at this stage if I don´t need to.

I will talk to the electric company/wait for the bill and then charge accoringdingly.

Saving the planet my ass..just rip off artists.
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Post by Pamski »

interesting cleanforum. We have one of these Mitsubishi hybrid Outlanders and have had a special charging point fitted at the front of our garden at home by the drive so my husband can plug in whenever the car is at home. When we are at our chalet in France he has an external power point, but just the normal house type and uses that for the charging.
I have just asked him if he has noticed a marked increase in our electricity usage, and he mutters that he hasn't (he is trying to get to sleep!) but that he monitors it. He does always note down the meter readings when we are in France as that is the house that is let sometimes. It does sound like a huge spike in usage, I can't see back to your original post but seem to recall normal use of 50KW and this week 300KW.
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Post by Bassman »

We looked at the Nissan Leaf it worked out roughly 30kwh per 150 kms. Roughly 4-5 Euros a charge
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Post by cleanforum »

300Kw is my estimate based on the 200kw after 6 days and they still have 3 more to go. difficult to say how much is due to the car.

everything in the villa is electric and they seem to be heavy users of everything including taking showers twice a day etc.

Even so as I mention our all time record to date, which was in August, is only 80Kw for a week, so the difference is huge..

They have been touring every single day so presumably charging each night.

I understand that these cars have an autonomy of 50k on the battery alone.

That would mean that during the nine days they have had (at least) 450km of free motoring at my expense. That energy has to come from somewhere right?

If your husband is correct though I may trade in my (dirty deisel) for one asap!
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Post by CSE »

Don't envy you. Got a feeling it is going to be a loose loose situation with these Dutch.
It looks as if they think it is normal. Like 100% of us we do not have anything in our T&CS about recharging electric vehicles. It is an abuse of power. This vehicle is not really an electric vehicle it's range is very limited thus they could have easily used the normal power unit every day. What they may have not realised is that Spain has one of the highest rates of electricity in Europe.
Having read reports on it , the manufactures claims of the MPG--L/100KM are grossly exaggerated, but that is a side issue.

To date I have seen a Renault Twizzy and the showroom and yesterday saw a BMWi3. Very strange as it was in a very small town and to get to even a large city and back it would need a recharge.
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Post by zebedee »

Thank you Cleanforum, for the "heads up" about this one!
Feel very sorry for you, they are really taking a liberty ( or it could be argued they are even stealing ???)

What do we all do now? Amend terms and conditions, OK.
Do we all now have to ask not only about the details of people staying at the property but also which make and model of car they have???

Perhaps we could all go back to £ or € meters for electricity? That would fix them :D :D :D
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Post by Bassman »

If you have it covered in your terms or not for me it doesnt matter its not really in the spirit of things, certainly they need to ask first. I would confront them and say you dont mind using your electricity but they need to pay 5-10€ for each charge.
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