I’d like to see Tesla work out deals with major cities to offer curb-side super chargers. The City can make these charging-only spots free, and it works towards most cities’ green initiatives.
the "free" part not likely to happen, in Vancouver at least. The City of Vancouver already has
green/EV initiatives and has lots of public L2 (and a few DCFC) stations, but 2 years ago they changed the city owned or operated ones from free parking & free charging to pay, primarily to encourage turnover of the spots. Some of those free charging spots were always full - there are a
lot of EVs here in the Lower Mainland, and now even worse with so many Model 3s. Meanwhile you see lots of people complaining in various downtown Supercharger threads (not just Vancouver) about having to pay for parking while charging.
The city even had a
curbside EV charging pilot program, although that's ended and I didn't hear the result of the pilot.
There are curbside FLO stations in Kitsilano.
yes, for example, those curbside L2 stations used to be free parking/free charging but since 2 years ago they added a nominal charging fee, IIRC $1/hr, with parking itself there free. The other local curbside example is the 2 spaces on Mainland St downtown - that one also used to be free parking/free charging, in an otherwise metered parking area. I think some people were using that as their secret free downtown parking spot even if not charging. But they now charge the regular meter rate $4/hr parking there (though I think charging itself is still free). At least the DCFC stations downtown on Hornby St are on the left side of a one-way street, though useless for a Tesla owner without a CHAdeMO adapter.
to bring this back to semi-OT, did anybody see that TV news item the other day about some Model 3 driver using
Smart Summon at Richmond Centre ? Yes that's near a busy entrance to the same shopping mall as we're talking about in this thread...
edit:
nothing really new here other than some survey statistics, but I just noticed
this article saying B.C. Hydro is concerned about the number of car-fuffles breaking out at electric vehicle charging stations, blaming lack of awareness of proper EV charging etiquette.