This definitely highlights another missed opportunity to standardize on something (where the plug should be). This is going to cause confusion for the other manufacturers' car owners when they charge at a SuperCharger and will be frustrating for the Tesla owners that may see an open spot only to find that the charging cable is being used by someone parked on the other side of the stall.
I'm going to have to disagree with this.
The reason is simple: who is going to decide what is "right"? I suspect that even as a small group we would fail to come up with a consensus on which of the six options in the graphic above are "right". From a user's standpoint, I think the Nissan LEAF had it right: front dead-center charge port. Works for pull-in spots (including diagonal parking spots which you cannot legally back into); and with charging stations that are shared between two adjacent spots (if you have a car with the charge port on the side and the only empty spot is on the "wrong" side, you're out of luck); and it's likely the most convenient for home charging station installs based on how most people pull into their garage.
An automotive engineer would have a different opinion, particularly one that wanted to feature a frunk in their vehicle. It's hard to have a charge port and associated wiring right where you want to have a front storage area.
And electrical engineers would want to keep the run from the charge port to the battery's main terminals as short as possible. Based on the layout of the battery, this may favor either a front (for FWD cars) or rear (for RWD and AWD) side position.
An insurance adjuster would probably hate charge ports located on the front of the car.
And so on. And that doesn't even start to cover the religious debates of whether it's preferable to pull in or back in to spots, and how to handle things like hitch mounted bike and ski racks, and God forbid, a trailer. And how about different sized vehicles, particularly Cybertruck-size and larger vehicles that will no doubt eventually appear?
For all these reasons, I think the real thing to focus on is not where the charge port is on the vehicle, but rather the design of the charging site layout itself. There's a pretty good reason why gas pumps are located on islands rather than at the end of a parking spot.
And I get that in the early days (of which we are only just now emerging), charging stations have been relegated to the corner of the parking lot and had to be installed in the least expensive way possible, and that, coupled with the Tesla design with a frunk and the battery terminals near the rear of the car, pretty much dictated the common Supercharger site layout.
But now I think it's time to start thinking about more practical layouts with islands that can support cars pulling up in either direction and not causing an issue if they have a trailer behind them.
www.tesla.com
