There’s a new reason to get upset at bad drivers.
In the video below, Kelly Olsen, an electric vehicle driver in Santa Monica, shows that drivers of conventional vehicles are parking in EV charging spots around the city. There are a limited number of these chargers available, so this makes it nearly impossible for EV drivers to charge their cars in a spot close to where they need to be.
It might not be dangerous, and it’s not quite as bad as parking in a handicap spot, but this behavior is up there with the worst of driving etiquette.
Olsen coined the term “ICEing” — short for Internal Combustion Engine — as way to describe the problem.
I personally like the term “watt blocking,” which references a more personal form of obstruction. Whatever we call it, my guess is that this problem will only get worse before it gets better.
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Tow the blockers away. With a fine, a towing charge and maybe some storage fees, no one will do it twice. Smarter people won’t do it the first time.
I drive a 2012 Nissan Leaf ev.
The term for having a gas car block access to an ev parking space, “being ICE’d”, has been around for several years. The real problem is that retailers tend to put ev charging stations in the “choice” parking areas, thinking it will be an incentive for someone to buy an ev so as not to have to walk an extra 50 feet. You can make that argument for disabled drivers, but it doesn’t actually work for ev’s. The best place for ev charging spaces is at the back of the parking lot far from the choice spaces. Otherwise, you’re just asking to get ICE’d.
Whenever folks in my ev club are asked about placement of chargers, we point that out.
Leptoquark has a good point. But it is also less costly for businesses to install them close to buildings. A few months back I came across an interactive map that located stations and told their status. (It may have been Blink, but they are accessible only to members now.) Anyway, I checked several dozen spots spread all across the nation. And only a handful of them were in use, the rest vacant.
@Jay Alt
I don’t think it is that much more costly if you have a parking lot with light poles. Tying in to the electric at the pole would be easy to set up a Level 1 charger. I think there is so much focus on setting up Level 2 chargers that people fail to remember that most people shop within a few miles of their home anyways.
An hour of Level 1 charging is more than enough for me to go to the store and come back. I would suggest installing more Level 1 options everywhere would alleviate most day to day driving needs. I come to work and park for 4 hours. I then go some place for lunch and then come back. If I could just level 1 every where that would be better than not finding a Level 2 anywhere…