We are seriously considering buying an electric car but perhaps our biggest reservation is how convenient it would or wouldn’t be when house sitting. We tend to sit in the country rather than towns so finding charging stations nearby might not be easy? In the past I have seen the odd sit pointing out that they have a charging point but how does that work with the payment side of things?
I’d love to hear from both hosts with charging points and EV sitters.
We have an electric car and a level 2 charging station in our garage.
I would be fine with your use of it as long as it would be local driving only (which would have to be the case as our dog can only be left for 6 hours), and would ask you to charge at night. In our case home electricity rates are far cheaper than public chargers (and definitely less than gas), and we have solar panels / battery to produce and store our own electricity. Not all hosts will have the same setup, and therefore may want a contribution towards electricity costs. I would just have them guestimate a flat fee based on their own electricity rates. There is probably some math you can do to get an exact number, the app for your car should track charging.
Should add: we are in the suburbs and not the country/rural, and there are plentiful public chargers around us in Southern California.
We travel extensively with our EV and have clocked up over 40,000km in the last two years mostly house sitting. In Europe. The charging infrastructure is superb but when in remote areas we ask permission from home owners to charge and every one to date has been very gracious and said yes. We always leave money to cover the costs so the HO isn’t out of pocket. (We just use our granny charger).
Where are you located and where do you intend to housesit ?
You can buy a portable Level 1 & 2 EV charger. I carry one in my electric car at all times. With the right length cord, you can plug into any household outlet. Charging will take forever, but at least it will be charged.
A Level 1 can plug into any household outlet. A Level 2 cannot, it needs to be a minimum 30 amp circuit. And never heard of a portable level 2 charger - do you have a link? We’d be interested but no idea how it would work?
We live in Sussex UK and generally choose sits within 4 hours drive
I live in California and drive an EV. This summer I drove to Washington State and have encountered a number of areas without fast charging stations. I have had homeowners offer for me to charge at their homes without asking and I have had to ask and offer to reimburse for the electricity. I always charge up as close to the destination as possible then when I arrive I plug in overnight and let the trickle charge do it’s very very slow thing. It is very easy on Google maps to chart your course to a destination and locate where the charging stations are and determine how often you will need to stop to make it to your destination as well as how much longer it will take you to get there. No matter where you charge it is so so much less expensive than paying for gasoline.