Supercharger blocking? Elon promises a solution

[brianman]

Not silly at all for Tesla to charge more for parking than charging. The purpose of the fee is to be a disincentive to blocking a spot after you're finished charging. It's not for revenue. The charging fee will not be set to discourage charging.

I missed the word 'not' in my post, as in "not charge more for parking than charging".

 

[apacheguy]

Happy squatters!

Twitter

"We are going to modify this so that people only pay a fee if most bays are occupied. If the site is basically deserted, no problem to park.
6:52 AM - 17 Dec 2016"

This makes sense. So if you arrive at just before midnight you can leave the car connected until first thing in the morning.

 

[Incredulocious]

Except...These "gas station" are also in a mall parking lots and restaurants.. It's going to suck when I take my kids to the mall and have to leave the mall to move my car. Or would these superchargers be excluded somehow?

No, it's the mall superchargers that have the biggest problem, with people plugging in and then shopping for hours. Too bad you think it sucks to have to take a few minutes to leave the mall to move your car to a regular parking space when it's charged. It sucks more to be someone on a long distance trip who stopped to supercharge and had to wait for you or others to finish shopping before they could charge and be on their way.

To TexasEV: Agreed, it's really messed up that people use superchargers (or other public chargers) at malls as essentially special parking spaces while they shop.

My question to kaj102wiu: do you actually need the charge when you go to your local mall?? Or are you really just taking advantage of it as a parking space with free charging? I mean most Teslas have hundreds of miles of range, why would you need to occupy the charger, thus blocking others in need while traveling? I do wonder how often when I see a Tesla plugged into a level 2 public charging spot at a shopping center whether they're just being opportunist or actually in need.

Even with my "lowly" 100-ish mile (normal, everyday non-extended charge) range in my RAV4, I do not need to occupy public chargers when I go shopping – even if the parking lot is pretty full. Because that's just wrong and I remember how it was sometimes difficult to find an open public charger years ago while driving my LEAF when I really did need to top up. (Even more annoying to find the spots occupied with plug-in hybrid Prius's or similar topping up their 11-mile battery.)

Well, I for one hope it does "suck" enough that people stop using charging spots for parking spaces. Which is also why I'm always happier to see public charging stations that charge a fee. I'm happy to pay if I actually need to extend my range. The free ones are typically always occupied.