EV charging at my Brighton Airbnb: I had a 7kW charger installed. Here's what it cost and whether guests mention it

I installed a 7kW EV charging point at my Brighton flat last October. Not because I had an electric car — I don't — but because I had a guest leave a four-star review specifically citing "no EV charging" as a negative, and because I'd been watching enough of my bookings come from Tesla owners to suspect this was becoming a real differentiator.

Nine months on. Here's what it actually cost, what happened, and whether I'd do it at the other properties.

Why I did it

Brighton is unusual. The city has one of the higher rates of EV adoption in the UK — partly demographics, partly the number of people who commute to London and want to charge overnight rather than queue at rapid chargers. My flat has a single parking space in a residents' bay, which I include in the listing as an optional extra at £8 per night.

That parking space is the asset. Adding a charge point to it felt like a straightforward upgrade to something guests were already paying for.

Also, honestly, the four-star review stung. "Everything was lovely but no EV charging" is the kind of sentence that feels unfair until you realise it's completely within your control to fix.

What I actually paid

I got three quotes. The first was from the main national installer my energy supplier recommended — £1,240 including a 7.4kW Ohme Home Pro and installation. The second was from a local electrical contractor who does EV work — £940 for a Zappi 7kW unit. The third was from a smaller installer I found via a local Facebook group — £870, Andersen A2, same power rating.

I went with the local contractor at £940. The Zappi felt right for a rental context because it has a clear display and is intuitive enough that I don't need to write a manual for guests. The national installer's quote included a monitoring subscription I didn't want to pay ongoing for.

The charger itself took about four hours to install. Trunking up the exterior wall, a new MCB on the consumer unit, the Type 2 socket on a post near the parking space. Tidy job.

The government grant situation

The EV Chargepoint Grant for businesses — administered via gov.uk — covers up to 75% of the cost of installation, capped at £350 per socket, for businesses including small accommodation businesses. I applied as a small accommodation business (I'm registered as a sole trader running short-term lets) and was approved. So the net cost after the grant was around £590.

I'd recommend checking current eligibility at gov.uk/apply-electric-vehicle-chargepoint-grant before quoting anyone a number — these schemes change and my situation may not match yours exactly. But if you're running your Airbnb as a declared business rather than casual income, it's worth looking into before you pay full price.

One thing: the grant requires you to use an approved installer from the OZEV list. All three of my quotes came from OZEV-approved contractors, so it wasn't a constraint, but worth confirming before you book anyone.

What happened after installation

In the nine months since, 23 guest groups have stayed at the flat. Of those, I'd estimate six to eight drove electric vehicles based on the smart charger data (it logs sessions). Three guests mentioned the EV charging in their reviews — two positively ("brilliant to have a charger, used it every night"), one neutrally ("nice touch with the EV charger, didn't need it but good to have").

I raised the parking add-on price from £8 to £10 per night after the charger went in. No bookings dropped off. So across the 23 groups, assume twelve of those took the parking — that's an extra £48 in revenue from the price increase alone. Not exactly paying for the charger in a hurry, but it covers the ongoing smart charger subscription (about £5 a month for the Zappi app) and then some.

The bigger impact might be search filtering. Airbnb lets guests filter by "EV charger" as an amenity. I ticked that box once the charger was installed. Whether my increased views since then are the charger or something else, I can't say for certain — but views did pick up in November and December, which are usually quiet months for me in Brighton.

The practicalities nobody mentions

Electricity cost. The charger pulls about 7kW. A guest who charges a full-ish battery — say 50 kWh — will cost me roughly £9–£12 in electricity at current rates. I don't charge guests separately for the electricity; I include it in the parking add-on. For most EV guests this feels fair — they're charging overnight on a standard charge, not running the battery from zero every night. If that changes I'll revisit.

Guest instructions. I wrote a four-line guide: where the charger is, how to plug in (Type 2 cable, guests bring their own or there's one in the hall cupboard), what the light sequence means, and the app name if they want to schedule charging. It's on the kitchen noticeboard and in the digital guidebook. Not one support message about it in nine months.

Vandalism / misuse. Hasn't happened. I was vaguely worried about the cable being nicked or the charger being used by random cars in adjacent spaces. The parking space is gated, which helps. In a property without a private space, this would be a real concern.

Would I install at the other properties?

Two of my other four properties have off-street parking — one in Edinburgh's Leith, one at the Lake District cottage. I'm looking at both.

The Leith flat is in a shared private car park with four spaces. Installing a charger there involves getting permission from the other three owners, which is a conversation I haven't had yet. It'll happen, but it's a slower process than a sole-owner space.

The cottage I'm more interested in. Rural Cumbria guests often drive longer distances and an overnight top-up matters more than it does in Brighton. I'd be surprised if half my summer bookings in 2026 aren't EV guests given the demographic — and right now the nearest public rapid charger is 14 miles away.

My two Edinburgh Old Town flats have no private parking at all, so it's moot. No space, no charger.

The honest verdict

It wasn't cheap — even after the grant, I'm looking at a two-to-three-year payback period through the parking rate increase alone. But I don't think of it purely as a charging amenity. It's a listing differentiator in a city where EV adoption is growing fast, and it removed a source of negative feedback that had nothing to do with the flat itself.

If you have off-street parking, check the grant, get three quotes from OZEV-approved installers, and decide based on your guest mix and your local EV adoption rate. In a rural property, I'd argue it's almost becoming essential. In a city centre flat with no parking, it's irrelevant. In between — which is most of us — it depends on whether your guests are the kind of people who'd have an electric car, and in 2026, that's a lot of people.