Charger sharing has the potential to help increase the speed of electric car purchases and fill the vacuum in the public charging infrastructure.
It’s a fairly recent concept, but the trend is quickly gaining popularity.
It comes with many bonuses, most notably monetary, as it’s an amazing passive income creator.
Whether your reasons to share your home EV charger is to assist others to switch to low emissions transport, make some extra money, or generally treat this as part of the modern era in car ownership, it’s making a massive impact.
With more domestic electric car wallboxes cropping up across numerous countries, are we seeing real change in the way we get about?
What’s EV Charger Sharing?
EV charger sharing, also known as community charging or peer-to-peer charging, is an invention that’s been around for some years now.
In brief, owners of residential home EV chargers offer their chargepoint to other motorists to charge their electric vehicles in exchange for a fixed sum.
Essentially, it’s about fellow drivers helping each other out, and there’s numerous reasons why this concept could become the new normal very shortly.
How It Works
A charger sharing appointment is booked and paid for using apps like Joosup.
Everything is virtually automated, apart from driving to the location and plugging in your car.
The app takes care of everything, from sourcing a nearby host, to booking an appropriate charging time, to taking payment.
Both individuals need to have the app installed.
And the superb benefit of Joosup is you can be both a host and driver using a solitary account.
So you can hire out your charge-point to other Joosup members to make some extra cash, whilst charging your own car at other Joosup member’s homes during your travels.
It’s the perfect back scratching arrangement in the EV community.
Charger sharing apps like this are perfect for people who have no driveway and no way to charge.
It’s also perfect for motorists who travel often and go to places where the public charging infrastructure is simply inadequate.
If the globe is going to change to electric, this is the solution to many roadblocks.
Reasons to EV Charger Share
There’s a whole world of reasons to hire out your charger with other EV drivers.
Some are reasonably obvious and simple to understand.
But there’s a few other bonuses that may make you think again:
1. Make Money
Offering up your EV charger means making a living.
You decide exactly how much you want to charge per hour to cover your overheads and make a profit.
So you have complete oversight to ensure you cover your electricity fees, even when energy tariffs are seemingly out of control.
And if you’re willing to allow motorists to park and refuel on your drive whilst you’re out, renting your charger involves almost zero effort.
So you make some money without having to lift a finger – apart from installing the app of course!
2. Combat Range Anxiety
Then there’s the old cliché “range anxiety”, which often crops up when trying to persuade petrol or diesel drivers to change to electric.
What if my car breaks down due to a flat battery and I can’t charge anywhere nearby?
The solution is, the more places around to charge electric vehicles, the more likely motorists will make the switch.
If every homeowner in the country rented out their EV charge-point, the shortfall in public availability could be rectified practically overnight.
Just imagine being able to travel virtually anywhere, reserve a charging appointment at any location, and literally turn up with your electrified parking slot ready and waiting for you?
3. Reduce Carbon Emissions
Domestic transport is responsible for around 27% of the UK’s total emissions.
Nearly all of that is produced by privately owned cars.
Sharing your charger will help to boost EV uptake and thus, reduce carbon emissions faster.
By decarbonising personal transport, we can make our cities, towns and villages cleaner so much faster.
4. Recoup Charger Costs
Having an EV charger fitted isn’t cheap.
Many of the latest EV chargers can cost up to £1000.00 or more.
Add installation costs on top and you could easily be out of pocket by more than £1500.00 before you’ve even completed your first ever charge!
By hiring out your home EV charger, you can recover some costs of the charger far quicker.
Sticking to charging just your vehicles once or twice a week means it will take much longer to recoup that outlay.
5. Extend Battery Life
Many EV drivers are unaware that they shouldn’t use rapid chargers too much when recharging their vehicles.
Rapid chargers run on DC (instead of AC), at a very high wattage, so your battery is accepting a very powerful current in a short space of time.
Repeatedly charging an EV in this manner could harm the battery and reduce its usable life.
By applying destination “top up” charging using shared charge-points (which run on AC), EV batteries will last so much longer.
This means our EV’s will surpass their expected lifespan and offer many more years of driving pleasure.
EV Charger Sharing Obstacles
Whilst the notion of charger sharing does seem very attractive, there’s a few worries to bear in mind.
Without doubt the pluses outweigh the minuses.
But before you decide to press ahead, make sure you’re aware of a few potential stumbling blocks.
Driveway Sharing
Sharing your charger means having strangers sat on your driveway, potentially for many hours at a stretch.
So make sure you’re cool with the idea of someone parking their car at your home and using your charger.
Also, make sure your neighbours know you’re charger sharing.
You don’t want them contacting the law when they see a stranger’s vehicle charging on your premises!
Stranger Danger!
Whilst most people are decent law abiding citizens, there’s always a few dodgy folks.
Renting your charger means allowing strangers to park at your house.
And if you would rather be in attendance during charging, you’ll have to deal with them directly.
So if you’re uncomfortable with this idea, it’s possible charger sharing is not ideal for you.
Potential Damages
Although this is infrequently heard of, potential damage to your EV charger through accidental misuse or wear and tear is feasible.
Your charger cables could get damaged, the plug could get broken or the unit could come loose from the wall.
These are all plausible, but as mentioned, quite infrequent.
If damage does happen, there’s the question of who’s liable?
And does home insurance cover any damages?
An untethered EV charger would help reduce this concern, as EV owners would need to supply their own cable.
But if your charger’s tethered, you need customers to use it responsibly.
Conclusion
Charger sharing is the ideal win-win situation for everyone in the EV gang.
If you own a charger, you can pay it off quicker and make a great income from renting it out.
As a driver, having a wider choice of locations to park and charge is all we want.
The fact is, driving and refueling an EV is nothing compared to a petrol or diesel vehicle.
So if the big switch to electric is going to happen, we’re going to need to rethink and reprogram the way we drive and charge our cars.
By altering our thought processes to point-to-point top up destination charging, we can make it happen.
It’s an adjustment, but ultimately, a quick and simple one to make.
Charger sharing is the way forward and with apps like Joosup, we can change the world.