As more electric vehicles arrive in Australia, the places we want to take them will expand. Being aided by charging infrastructure projects, charging is becoming easier, mostly thanks to the likes of Chargefox.
While ultra-fast charging is amazing, there will be plenty of times where you want to travel to a destination and know the charging facilities are available at your location, rather than divert and delay your trip to charge, or to get home.
Slowly the pieces of the puzzle are coming together, with Google Maps already offering EV charging locations when you search, although this still doesn’t provide journey planning like in-vehicle routing, say in a Tesla.
Ideally what you want is services like Airbnb to offer filters for EV owners to refine search results based on those properties that have charging facilities.
Public businesses are already clued into this with many wineries and hotels offering Tesla destination charging as one of their features to attract customers.
From a wall charger in an apartment car space to a garage with access to 240V, having EV filters on Airbnb is win-win. The hosts get to add another feature to their property metadata and assist in occupancy, while those searching to trip destinations benefit from knowing where EVs are made to feel at home.
As higher-speed wall chargers at home become more common, it’s possible that an Airbnb property could be from a EV owner. That owner may include the cost of charging in the nightly rate for staying at the property, or simply enjoy offering it to like minded people for use.
Recently Airbnb made a play for the business market. Given the number of corporate vehicles that are going to be EVs in the next few years, I’d suggest those business customers would also be well served by having this information on properties.
If you do search right now on the site, you get an option to filter on ‘More filters’. This expands to refine the search results on the number of beds, rooms, bathrooms, amenities, facilities, property type and more, but none of that relates to parking or charging.
Please add EV charging Airbnb.
