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Charge Rage: Electric Cars Are Making People Meaner In California
HughPickens.com writes: Matt Richtel reports that the push to make the state greener with electric cars is having an unintended side effect: It is making some people meaner. The bad moods stem from the challenges drivers face finding recharging spots for their battery-powered cars. Unlike gas stations, charging stations are not yet in great supply, and that has led to sharp-elbowed competition. According to Richtel, electric-vehicle owners are unplugging one another's cars, trading insults, and creating black markets and side deals to trade spots in corporate parking lots. The too-few-outlets problem is a familiar one in crowded cafes and airports, where people want to charge their phones or laptops. But the need can be more acute with cars — will their owners have enough juice to make it home? — and manners often go out the window. "Cars are getting unplugged while they are actively charging, and that's a problem," says Peter Graf. "Employees are calling and messaging each other, saying, 'I see you're fully charged, can you please move your car?'"
The problem is that installation of electric vehicle charging ports at some companies has not kept pace with soaring demand, creating thorny etiquette issues in the workplace. German software company SAP installed 16 electric vehicle charging ports in 2010 at its Palo Alto campus for the handful of employees who owned electric vehicles. Now there are far more electric cars than chargers. Sixty-one of the roughly 1,800 employees on the campus now drive a plug-in vehicle, overwhelming the 16 available chargers. And as demand for chargers exceeds supply, there have been notorious incidents of "charge rage." Companies are finding that they need one charging port for every two of their employees' electric vehicles. "If you don't maintain a 2-to-1 ratio, you are dead," said ChargePoint CEO Pat Romano. "Having two chargers and 20 electric cars is worse than having no chargers and 20 electric cars. If you are going to do this, you have to be willing to continue to scale it."
The problem is that installation of electric vehicle charging ports at some companies has not kept pace with soaring demand, creating thorny etiquette issues in the workplace. German software company SAP installed 16 electric vehicle charging ports in 2010 at its Palo Alto campus for the handful of employees who owned electric vehicles. Now there are far more electric cars than chargers. Sixty-one of the roughly 1,800 employees on the campus now drive a plug-in vehicle, overwhelming the 16 available chargers. And as demand for chargers exceeds supply, there have been notorious incidents of "charge rage." Companies are finding that they need one charging port for every two of their employees' electric vehicles. "If you don't maintain a 2-to-1 ratio, you are dead," said ChargePoint CEO Pat Romano. "Having two chargers and 20 electric cars is worse than having no chargers and 20 electric cars. If you are going to do this, you have to be willing to continue to scale it."
Or another alternate headline: "Rich people fight over free lunches"
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
According to Richtel, electric-vehicle owners are unplugging one another's cars, trading insults, and creating black markets and side deals to trade spots in corporate parking lots.
I've always thought that once they became sufficiently popular you might need some sort of lock on the charger while charging otherwise merry pranksters (read @$$holes) might come along and just unplug your car, effectively leaving you stranded for a period of time if your charge is low.
I remember a while ago, as some people predicted that 30-minute charging times would be a problem. A lot of people formed a chorus to shout them down, referring to how long cars usually sit while people are at work, etc. But what those people didn't take into account is that a charging station is not at all like a normal parking spot. The charging equipment is expensive, as is installation of it...and like most things electrical, there are incredibly difficult challenges when you try to scale things. At first blush it may seem like a simple matter to simply run more wiring to build out more spots...but at some point you hit the stage where the line running to the building simply isn't big enough. So what...you get another transformer? It goes down the rabbit hole very quickly.
Despite appearances, a charging station isn't a parking spot with a plug for your car. It's a spot at a gas pump that takes half an hour to use. And that's the real challenge with electric cars...not range, not cost. Those are solved or about to be solved.
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We have over 40 chargers herespread over many different buildings, usually no problem to get one. There are 4 spaces for each dual-plug station. There is a posted 4 hour limit, so and the employees are really good at moving charge cables around when charging is finished. You can be fairly sure that if you park in a charging spot even if you can't plug in you will be full by EOD. If you really need to make sure you are charging you can check your Leaf app and see if you've been plugged in by lunch, if not you go out and move it (and any others that need to be moved).