EVs, stupidity, and common sense…
Discussion
Despite having covered nearly 6000 miles in my Polestar 2, this is the first week I have relied heavily on public charging.
It strikes me that the biggest threat to EVs is the stupidity and selfishness of the general public.
For example…. on Saturday I witnessed a bloke at an InstaVolt in Northumberland trying to use the Chademo with his Merc EQA. He seemed enraged when I told him the car next to him was using the only connector suitable for his car. How can he not know what does and doesn’t work with his car?
The next day we drove down to the Lake District, stopping at Killington Services en route. At the Gridserve chargers a guy in a Hyundai Kona was parked across two spaces, meaning I couldn’t use the second charger.
Whilst at our hotel the two chargers have almost exclusively been blocked by ICE cars, or by EVs not actually charging. Yesterday it was another EQA (not even plugged in) and a Vauxhall of some description, and as I write this, an iPace that finished charging hours ago, and a Peugeot 106. Earlier in the week a Cupra Formentor hybrid occupied a charger for at least a day.
I’ve never experienced a problem with a charger that wasn’t entirely down to another human, and I can only see this getting worse as more people buy EVs.
It strikes me that the biggest threat to EVs is the stupidity and selfishness of the general public.
For example…. on Saturday I witnessed a bloke at an InstaVolt in Northumberland trying to use the Chademo with his Merc EQA. He seemed enraged when I told him the car next to him was using the only connector suitable for his car. How can he not know what does and doesn’t work with his car?
The next day we drove down to the Lake District, stopping at Killington Services en route. At the Gridserve chargers a guy in a Hyundai Kona was parked across two spaces, meaning I couldn’t use the second charger.
Whilst at our hotel the two chargers have almost exclusively been blocked by ICE cars, or by EVs not actually charging. Yesterday it was another EQA (not even plugged in) and a Vauxhall of some description, and as I write this, an iPace that finished charging hours ago, and a Peugeot 106. Earlier in the week a Cupra Formentor hybrid occupied a charger for at least a day.
I’ve never experienced a problem with a charger that wasn’t entirely down to another human, and I can only see this getting worse as more people buy EVs.
Sheepshanks said:
Our company is pushing us to get EVs but I'm based near Chester and many of my journeys are to Scotland, the NE or down South, so unless cars appear with a "safe" 400+ mile range I'll almost always need to charge while out and about and it fills me full of dread.
We do have chargers! I must say some free roadside charges I pass always have diesel taxi in the thu.TheRainMaker said:
Our local leisure centre has 4 EV chargers close to the front door and two a fair distance away, nearly every weekend we go the four by the door are always taken by EV's not plugged in, and the two further away never have anyone parked in them.
People are morons.
I almost find misuse by other EV drivers much harder to forgive. They shouldn’t have the excuse of ignorance, but yes, people are morons. People are morons.
ajap1979 said:
TheRainMaker said:
Our local leisure centre has 4 EV chargers close to the front door and two a fair distance away, nearly every weekend we go the four by the door are always taken by EV's not plugged in, and the two further away never have anyone parked in them.
People are morons.
I almost find misuse by other EV drivers much harder to forgive. They shouldn’t have the excuse of ignorance, but yes, people are morons. People are morons.
Seeing how thoughtlessly a lot of folk drive generally, it would not be surprising (sitting nose-to-tail in the 3rd lane of a 4-lane motorway with no vehicles inside them being the prime example).
In cases like the leisure centre mentioned, they should stick notices on the offenders, telling them to park elsewhere unless charging.
ajap1979 said:
Despite having covered nearly 6000 miles in my Polestar 2, this is the first week I have relied heavily on public charging.
It strikes me that the biggest threat to EVs is the stupidity and selfishness of the general public.
For example…. on Saturday I witnessed a bloke at an InstaVolt in Northumberland trying to use the Chademo with his Merc EQA. He seemed enraged when I told him the car next to him was using the only connector suitable for his car. How can he not know what does and doesn’t work with his car?
The next day we drove down to the Lake District, stopping at Killington Services en route. At the Gridserve chargers a guy in a Hyundai Kona was parked across two spaces, meaning I couldn’t use the second charger.
Whilst at our hotel the two chargers have almost exclusively been blocked by ICE cars, or by EVs not actually charging. Yesterday it was another EQA (not even plugged in) and a Vauxhall of some description, and as I write this, an iPace that finished charging hours ago, and a Peugeot 106. Earlier in the week a Cupra Formentor hybrid occupied a charger for at least a day.
I’ve never experienced a problem with a charger that wasn’t entirely down to another human, and I can only see this getting worse as more people buy EVs.
I do sympathise with you as its very frustrating..It strikes me that the biggest threat to EVs is the stupidity and selfishness of the general public.
For example…. on Saturday I witnessed a bloke at an InstaVolt in Northumberland trying to use the Chademo with his Merc EQA. He seemed enraged when I told him the car next to him was using the only connector suitable for his car. How can he not know what does and doesn’t work with his car?
The next day we drove down to the Lake District, stopping at Killington Services en route. At the Gridserve chargers a guy in a Hyundai Kona was parked across two spaces, meaning I couldn’t use the second charger.
Whilst at our hotel the two chargers have almost exclusively been blocked by ICE cars, or by EVs not actually charging. Yesterday it was another EQA (not even plugged in) and a Vauxhall of some description, and as I write this, an iPace that finished charging hours ago, and a Peugeot 106. Earlier in the week a Cupra Formentor hybrid occupied a charger for at least a day.
I’ve never experienced a problem with a charger that wasn’t entirely down to another human, and I can only see this getting worse as more people buy EVs.
In Granada Spain where we live it's literally every parking space counts..!!
That includes EV charging points, disabled, and worst of all parking very badly across 2 or even 3 spaces.....
aestetix1 said:
There's something about the British that makes us inconsiderate. We like to think we are good at queuing and common courtesy, but in reality some large proportion of the population only think about themselves.
That’s remind me one time I went out with a friend, I parked too close to one side and I try to come out and park more “middle” to allow other car enough space to open their door. She told me I was fine, my car was inside the white line, she go to church every Sunday and do volunteer work all the time
It's not that the charger network is bad, or that people are stupid, it's a bit of both.
I have absolutely no issues with dealing with finding or using public chargers, yet my parents are driven to despair by it. The public charger network DOES work, but you need to be prepared for it to present issues and you to have to understand how to solve them.
If you don't instinctively know how the car is talking to the charger, the charger is talking to a server, the server is talking to the phone app, the phone app is talking to the credit card company, and how any one of those things might need fixed before the car will charge, then any sort of error, wrong sequence of buttons, change of wind direction could scupper it, you're going to have bother.
If you don't know that not all cars have the same plug shape, or that some chargers are faster than others and how to identify them, or that every car has a different charge-speed curve, or that every charging network has different costs, you can easily run into issues.
That's not to mention all the stuff that ISN'T written down anywhere, like sharing a charger that somebody else is already using (probably halving their charge speed) or how to choose the right Tesla charger based on their ABC123 numbers based on who is already charging, or queuing etiquette if all chargers are full.. none of that is explained to anyone who buys an EV.
Think about it, the first DC 50kW charger was installed in 2013. That's only 9 years ago, and the standards barely covered anything other than plug shape and basic communication.
As the standards developed (and the best standard floated to the top) everything is getting better, and it's already as easy as it could be if you use, say, Fastned who support Plug and Charge, and have a really good app, but there are a lot of EVs out there that were designed before ISO/IEC 15118 took off. It's a mess. The apps are terrible. The communication is problematic. The chargers just switch themselves off if anything goes wrong (instead of helping resolve the issue). It all works, but it's not finished being developed. Modern cars are starting to support some form of Plug and Charge (so there's no buttons or screens or apps or any nonsense to deal with at the charger), but it'll be another 9 years before that's the norm and everyone does it properly and stops trying to go their own way and reinvent the wheel. There are a load of crappy old chargers out there from companies who had to find their own way, and had to work with a load of cars not built to the still emerging standards. We've got the interoperablility written down on paper now, the Japs are coming on board too, so we're on the road to a unified plug type, a unified standard, and no buttons and screens to worry about.
9 years from now, it'll be as easy for my parents to charge as it is for me now.
Meanwhile, it's like a Linux laptop vs a Macbook. They both work, but you gran can only use one of them.
I have absolutely no issues with dealing with finding or using public chargers, yet my parents are driven to despair by it. The public charger network DOES work, but you need to be prepared for it to present issues and you to have to understand how to solve them.
If you don't instinctively know how the car is talking to the charger, the charger is talking to a server, the server is talking to the phone app, the phone app is talking to the credit card company, and how any one of those things might need fixed before the car will charge, then any sort of error, wrong sequence of buttons, change of wind direction could scupper it, you're going to have bother.
If you don't know that not all cars have the same plug shape, or that some chargers are faster than others and how to identify them, or that every car has a different charge-speed curve, or that every charging network has different costs, you can easily run into issues.
That's not to mention all the stuff that ISN'T written down anywhere, like sharing a charger that somebody else is already using (probably halving their charge speed) or how to choose the right Tesla charger based on their ABC123 numbers based on who is already charging, or queuing etiquette if all chargers are full.. none of that is explained to anyone who buys an EV.
Think about it, the first DC 50kW charger was installed in 2013. That's only 9 years ago, and the standards barely covered anything other than plug shape and basic communication.
As the standards developed (and the best standard floated to the top) everything is getting better, and it's already as easy as it could be if you use, say, Fastned who support Plug and Charge, and have a really good app, but there are a lot of EVs out there that were designed before ISO/IEC 15118 took off. It's a mess. The apps are terrible. The communication is problematic. The chargers just switch themselves off if anything goes wrong (instead of helping resolve the issue). It all works, but it's not finished being developed. Modern cars are starting to support some form of Plug and Charge (so there's no buttons or screens or apps or any nonsense to deal with at the charger), but it'll be another 9 years before that's the norm and everyone does it properly and stops trying to go their own way and reinvent the wheel. There are a load of crappy old chargers out there from companies who had to find their own way, and had to work with a load of cars not built to the still emerging standards. We've got the interoperablility written down on paper now, the Japs are coming on board too, so we're on the road to a unified plug type, a unified standard, and no buttons and screens to worry about.
9 years from now, it'll be as easy for my parents to charge as it is for me now.
Meanwhile, it's like a Linux laptop vs a Macbook. They both work, but you gran can only use one of them.
I've just got back from a road trip to Germany and I witnessed quite a bit of stupidity:
Full blown row at Folkestone Supercharger over a charging spot (2 Tesla owners)
An ID4 charging (right side charge port) on a Supercharger and me having to point out to around 5 Tesla's that they couldn't charge in the seemingly empty spot as the ID4 was using 'their' handle
Many many instances on the French autoroutes of non EV's just flat out ICE'ing Superchargers
A few instances of ICE'ing charge points in Germany despite clear signage
Two instances of non Tesla's trying to charge at Superchargers that weren't open to non-Tesla's. In these cases I politely showed them how to use the app to see what was open and pointed them to the Ionity charges
This was just in effect all seen in 2 days of driving, it's still a challenge for many out there seemingly.
Full blown row at Folkestone Supercharger over a charging spot (2 Tesla owners)
An ID4 charging (right side charge port) on a Supercharger and me having to point out to around 5 Tesla's that they couldn't charge in the seemingly empty spot as the ID4 was using 'their' handle
Many many instances on the French autoroutes of non EV's just flat out ICE'ing Superchargers
A few instances of ICE'ing charge points in Germany despite clear signage
Two instances of non Tesla's trying to charge at Superchargers that weren't open to non-Tesla's. In these cases I politely showed them how to use the app to see what was open and pointed them to the Ionity charges
This was just in effect all seen in 2 days of driving, it's still a challenge for many out there seemingly.
TheRainMaker said:
Our local leisure centre has 4 EV chargers close to the front door and two a fair distance away, nearly every weekend we go the four by the door are always taken by EV's not plugged in, and the two further away never have anyone parked in them.
People are morons.
Yep, happens at our leisure centre too. They treat the space like parent and child or disabled spaces. As if they are only for EVs, not that they are they only to charge EVs.People are morons.
TheRainMaker said:
Our local leisure centre has 4 EV chargers close to the front door and two a fair distance away, nearly every weekend we go the four by the door are always taken by EV's not plugged in, and the two further away never have anyone parked in them.
People are morons.
That’s worse. A ev charging spot taken by a ev not charging should be towed away. People are morons.
Gassing Station | EV and Alternative Fuels | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff