Parking at DCA in the charging Spots?

[Ironman_Hokie]

Ok, am I missing something. I park at Reagan quite frequently. I've tried to park in the charging spots a few times when I was going somewhere for a day or so and needed a charge. I know there are 8 EV spots and only 4 of them have L2 chargers and 4 of them have 110V outlets. However, quite often most of the spots are taken by EVs that aren't charging or even trying to charge. When I tried to park yesterday, there were 3 Leafs and 5 Teslas. There were 2-3 cars charging total and only 1 Tesla charging. The other Teslas didn't even have the charge port open or plugged in via 110V.

So, are the EV spots special EV parking only spots or are they for people to at least try to charge at any rate? I admit I've tried to charge at Dulles via the 110V and the UMC and popped the charger breaker (stopped charging) a few hours later and came back a couple of days later to the car it had only charged like 10 miles. So the 110V can be almost useless but at least I tried to charge.

 

[mikeash]

From the signage posted on PlugShare, it doesn't look like there's any requirement to actually charge. It's just EV parking that happens to provide chargers. Of course, I'd say that regardless of official requirements, you shouldn't park at a charger unless you're going to use it.

 

[DFibRL8R]

This is a problem with airport chargers in general especially in daily or long term lots. Most people at the airport don't need a faster charge. Heck I would say most Teslas don't need any charge unless they are coming from over 200 miles away (as evidenced by 4/5 Teslas not plugged in).

This really is a challenging problem, made worse by:
1) Bad signage that doesn't specifically state spots for EV charging.
2) Spots that are located too conveniently to tempt use when not really needed and EV owners who want to take a choice parking spot when they don't really need the charge
3) Lack of sufficient number of charge points (installing multiple properly set up 110 outlets would be great and less expensive than true EV chargers)

This is only going to get worse as more EVs hit the road. I recommend advocating for more charging and better signage any time you notice this type of issue with a destination charger.