Over the holiday, I found myself in various charging situations and I wanted to crowdsource the etiquette rules for charging at EV stations.

  1. An EA station had 3 out of 4 stations out of service (I know, shocker) and I was behind a Chevy Bolt for the 4th. Bolts are notoriously slow to charge to begin with, but to make matters worse, this owner insisted on charging to 100% and was taking forever.

  2. I arrived to find that all chargers were occupied, and a line had formed of 3 EVs that were waiting to charge. I got in line and began charging in 5 minutes, but after I had hooked up, someone else arrived. They pretended not to see the line (tbf they might not have, the line was down to 1 car at that point), and snaked a charger from the person who was waiting. (They ended up having a mildly heated discussion before the waiter just allowed the snaker to take the charger.)

  3. I arrived to find all chargers full. I parked next to the chargers to wait. As I was waiting, a Kona arrived and also parked to wait. I started looking at my phone. I didn’t notice someone leaving from a charger, and instead of giving me a heads up, the Kona snaked the charger. (Whatever. There was another charger about to be vacated.)

  4. I arrived to find 2 of 4 chargers out of service at an (you guessed it) an EA station. I parked to wait. I was looking at my phone when I heard another car pulling up. Lo and behold, one of the working chargers had cleared up without my noticing. Although the newly arriving car was in front of me, they noticed I was waiting and let me have the working, now-empty charger. They decided to wait for me.

  5. A Kia EV6 was connected to a charger next to me. I assume the owner set up charging and went to the bathroom. But by the time I got there, the EA charger displayed an error on the screen and was no longer charging (EA, don’t ever change). I felt bad for the owner. S/He was going to be pissed. I wanted to let them know their charger had malfunctioned and they were having their time wasted, but I had no way of contacting them. I guess there was nothing to be done in that scenario.

What’s your take on these situations?

  • BerryPossible@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I follow the order of arrival as best I can. I’ve even let would be sneakers know there are several people waiting. I think most of the problems stem from just how badly barging stations are laid out. Could really take a page from the gas station book. Or design them so there is a charge lane and waiting lane etc

  • smoky77211@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I do wish there was a queue system for chargers. Since it’s not 2 minutes to fill a tank like gasoline a person could be waiting up to 30 minutes just to have someone cut in line and still have an additional 30 minute wait. I also believe that no one should touch another persons vehicle or charge station. That is a no-no at gas stations and should be at charge stations too. There is also the issue of too many apps and payment methods. But that is for another discussion.

  • Suitable_Switch5242@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Forming a queue and respecting it is nice etiquette, but I wouldn’t expect it to work perfectly or scale well especially when chargers are just in random corners of parking lots.

    We either need software queuing solutions as a stopgap, or enough chargers - and connected charger routing - to minimize wait times.

    I think any effort spent on improving the queuing process is really better spent on charger buildout and reliability.

    As for the charge failure I think that’s really up to the owner and their car. Some cars can send a notification if charging stops, and some charger apps will do this as well. But there’s really nothing you can do as an observer.

    Thankfully I’ve only had to wait for charger once, and there wasn’t any organized queue. I just parked and waited a bit until I saw a spot open up.