Public car park charging points

[Jonsv8]

I'm thinking of making the move to EV and one of the charging options that might work for me is finding public car parks with charging points. I can't imagine they let you park your car in one all day though at a charging point? If nothing else it's a bit anti social. I'm just trying to work out the practicalities of driving to one of the city centre offices I might need to visit where I might be for 5 or 6 hours

[pboyall]

Not sure I follow - if you're going to be parked for 5-6 hours, why would it be anti-social to be parked for 5-6 hours?

I guess you mean to be charging for 5-6 hours? That's about right for a full charge anyway on the slower chargers in the car parks, so not really anything that anyone can say.

What I would note is that quite often there is more than one bay which can reach a point and the cars can be set to release the cable when they are done charging. So if you wanted to be polite you could park as far from the charger as possible (in a non-EV bay) and set the cable to auto-release, so anyone turning up later can grab a charge.

There is also a thing called CHargeBump on the App Store (Play Store) which you can put a QR code in your window and people can "bump" you if they would like to charge - saves you giving out your phone number but provides a communications channel.

[Jonsv8]

Thanks - the anti social bit was if I only needed say only 3 hours charging but blocked the space for double that time. A friend has charging points at his work and its a first come first served thing and they've worked out a friendly system of moving cars at lunch time but thats easier if you know the people. They mostly have PHEVs so don't take forever to top up.

A lot to learn but as I do 25k miles a year, mainly in 200 mile round trips, I can't afford to get it wrong. I'm looking at teslas so the range should normally be fine but sods law will have me doing a 400 - 500 mile circuit over a few days without returning home. The DC charging being added/enabled on the Tesla will make a big difference as a comfort 30 mins stop at a service station will be pretty handy

[pboyall]

Wow, amazing to find someone who actually cares about other people - a rare breed indeed!

You'll probably never use public car park charging points in a Tesla, with the SuperChargers it's so much quicker (1 mile range very 6 seconds) that there's not much point sipping away in the public spots (1 mile range every 2 minutes). Most public points are only 7kW, so you will add about 15 miles an hour to a Tesla. Your six hour meeting would give you 90 miles - not to be sniffed at, however, it's only about 10 minutes on a Supercharger!

[Jonsv8]

Update for others reading, I've been checking out the charging bays at various ncp car parks I use and I'm yet to see a car in a bay and there have been up to 8 bays in one car park. Consequently I dont think parking there all day is an issue at the moment.

[FiF]

Mind you on the other hand have been taking a note of the EV charging spaces in the uni car park that I discovered the other day. Ignoring that the charge pointappears to be out of service tthey've been blocked by a succession of crappy Peugeot and Fords for the past week.

Oh god turning into an ev whinger before even decided to get one.

[propaganda]

I had an extended demo of an i3 REX. Pulled into ASDA to use their charging points - every bay was occupied by a non-electric vehicle - the car park had loads of space but the charge points were closer to the main entrance. I suspect this will be a major issue for some users.

[supermono]

This is annoying. Supermarkets provide a huge excess of disabled spots which can be used at no practical disadvantage to anyone (provided half a dozen or so nearer ones are free before oyu park), yet parking a non elec to block the electric guys out is causing actual grief.

I can't believe how selfish some people are. Good thing I've ordered the 8m cable with mine.