A friend of mine who works for Google was charging at the Mountain View supercharger. I asked him whether he ever used Google sponsored chargers in its campus. He said that he left them available for Nissan Leafs and other EVs. I found that quite generous of him, but also, let us say, interesting, given how crowded MV superchargers are these days.
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Google employee using Mountain View supercharger, not Google charger
- Thread starter Blue_Model_S
- Start date
Seems reasonable to me. I have heard that the EV charging spaces on the Google campus are in high demand by many short range EVs like the Leaf. The Apple campus has the same issue.
israndy
Supercharger Hunter
Apple opened a subsidiary that is a power company, Let's them feed power to the grid from remote renewables locations and use it to cover the power use of their stores and NOCs. When I worked there it always impressed me how many free chargers they have.
The new Spaceship campus has a parking garage covered in panels and then buckets of free charging inside. Even their visitor center has a giant underground parking garage with a big block of free to the public chargers on every level.
Back on topic: I am not sure what to say about leaving the slow chargers to the Leafs. Is that what you deserve for having purchased a Leaf, all the free chargers? For a long time, I used to charge at the local mall, it was free to charge and I dropped the car off at night and it was charged by the morning. Usually, the other free space was empty all night. This same mall has the Alameda Supercharger. Occasionally I would get a note to move my car, this isn't for Teslas. But this is free ad-supported charging for mall customers... No? Why just BMWs and Fords?
A friend of mine was upset at me for using one of the free chargers next to the Atascadero Supercharger while we were at Blade Runner across the street. I would need to charge to get home from that drive, but not so much that I couldn't fill during the movie. Seemed perfect to me.
Should I leave the free charging to the Leafs of the world like the Google employee above and take it on the chin because I purchased the expensive car with the pay-for fast-charging network that no one else can use? I think this is a part of EV Etiquette that needs more exploration. Along with the guys that leave their car at the CHAdeMO charger for hours while they go out with friends. Guess they can't tell when their car is done charging from remote like we can.
The new Spaceship campus has a parking garage covered in panels and then buckets of free charging inside. Even their visitor center has a giant underground parking garage with a big block of free to the public chargers on every level.
Back on topic: I am not sure what to say about leaving the slow chargers to the Leafs. Is that what you deserve for having purchased a Leaf, all the free chargers? For a long time, I used to charge at the local mall, it was free to charge and I dropped the car off at night and it was charged by the morning. Usually, the other free space was empty all night. This same mall has the Alameda Supercharger. Occasionally I would get a note to move my car, this isn't for Teslas. But this is free ad-supported charging for mall customers... No? Why just BMWs and Fords?
A friend of mine was upset at me for using one of the free chargers next to the Atascadero Supercharger while we were at Blade Runner across the street. I would need to charge to get home from that drive, but not so much that I couldn't fill during the movie. Seemed perfect to me.
Should I leave the free charging to the Leafs of the world like the Google employee above and take it on the chin because I purchased the expensive car with the pay-for fast-charging network that no one else can use? I think this is a part of EV Etiquette that needs more exploration. Along with the guys that leave their car at the CHAdeMO charger for hours while they go out with friends. Guess they can't tell when their car is done charging from remote like we can.
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ljbad4life
Member
I think of it like this:
1) "Do I need to charge to continue my day/make it home?" If I have 300 miles of range, I travel 50 miles to get to the mall/movies etc, do I really need to charge for the 2-3 hrs that I'm there?
2) How many chargers are there/how busy is this location for charging? If it's not busy, then there's no harm in me charging. If there's a large amount of chargers (over 5 stalls), again there's no harm. If there's 1 or 2 stalls, then it will inconvenience short range ev buyers (not PHEV owners, they have gas to fall back on)
I don't want to punish short range ev buyers because that's what they could afford. They could have bought a cheaper ICE and that would mean the EV market is smaller and that would mean less infrastructure that I'm taking advantage of (non-tesla chargers). It creates negativity around EVs, given the fact that this is probably their first ev and if they have trouble charging it will be their last.
I have never feared making it to my destination, 300 miles is a lot of time and distance to plan ahead to charger/reroute. 100 miles is not a lot of room for error. If I see a Leaf, they get the charger without me batting an eye.
*easter egg*my avatar is of my car charging at a level 2 charger ha!
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First, one would say at lot has changed in the 4 years since this thread was started. There’s a gazillion more superchargers and a gazillion more office chargers (and apparently the MV supercharger is all but completely useless these days). Regardless, the concept of charging etiquette should be less about who deserves this or doesn’t deserve that and more about basic courtesy.
Its fair that at the workplace chargers are first-come-first-served [within workplace rules], and unless there’s an abundance of chargers one should move their vehicle when it’s done charging. If chargers are limited its also Not Cool to leave your big, depleted battery on charge all day even if there are no workplace rules that prohibit such behavior.
Its fair that pay-per-use public chargers are first-come-first served. The pricing structure is typically self policing; obviously it is Not Cool to block others if there are otherwise no downsides to leaving your car plugged in after its done charging.
The difficult line to draw is protocol on free public chargers which, for better or worse, are often abused. In the big picture though they enable more EVs on the road, and that's a Good Thing. With some obvious exceptions (hotels, airports, and destination HPWCs) courtesy suggests that big battery EVs avoid freebie slow chargers, and especially Teslas that have free access to the supercharging network. There's simply not a lot of value in a slow charge relative to the value someone else might find in that same slow charge.
Regarding your Atascadero scenario, I suspect most here would agree with your friend that it's more courteous to leave the slow charger for EVs that rely on them. The extra few minutes of inconvenient supercharging on the front or back end of a long, non-interruptable engagement (like a movie) is simply the price to pay for looking out for our EV brethren, and for those who don't have free supercharging, the couple bucks one could save by using the free charger can instead be a deposit in the karma bank.
israndy
Supercharger Hunter
Thus the phrase Karma is a Bitch
So Don't touch the free chargers because we have pay-for chargers everywhere. Got it.
Did I mention my fixed income as a retiree? (the photo to the left is just the same photo I have been using since I joined the interwebs back in the early 90s, trying to be consistent)
So Don't touch the free chargers because we have pay-for chargers everywhere. Got it.
Did I mention my fixed income as a retiree? (the photo to the left is just the same photo I have been using since I joined the interwebs back in the early 90s, trying to be consistent)
