Company parking lot charger etiquette

[Dave5609]

I tend to think of them as "refueling stations"...instead of parking spots, especially at work where there may be limited quantity and you're near the car all day. After the battery is full, move to a normal parking spot and free up the space for someone else. You wouldn't leave your ICE at the pump all day long.

[strider]

My work just installed a single chargepoint station last Friday. We have 2 Volts, 1 PiP, 4 Leafs, and my Roadster.

I had assumed it would be a madhouse but yesterday when I came back from lunch both spots were open and this morning when I arrived they were both open. I decided to charge both times as I want our Facilities team to see as much utilization as possible so maybe they'll put in more chargers (yes, I know they're EVSE's, hard habit to break).

I think it's fine that the PHEV's get to charge as that means more electric miles driven - as long as they don't sit on the charger all day. Since our office is using chargepoint you can pull up the station on the app and see if it's In Use or not. That way you'll know if someone's car is done charging but still sitting there you can unplug them.

We're going to start an internal e-mail distro list that folks can join and we'll send out blast notices on that if someone truly needs to charge to get home but we also are learning who drives what and so you just send them an e-mail or call them directly. Obviously that only works at smaller facilities with private parking.

I would put something on my window to the effect of: I am charging to show my support of EV charing infrastructure. If you need to charge in order to get home please call or text me at xyz and you can have my plug.

[gg_got_a_tesla]

At work, we have 6 ClipperCreek stations out in an exposed surface parking lot and they are usually taken up by LEAFs, Focus Electrics and Volts.

Even if I get to work early enough to get one of these after my ~27 mile one way commute, I end up plugging into a 110V outlet in an EV-only spot 'out back' in an enclosed parking structure. Keeping the car indoors is preferable, of course.

The trickle charge over 8-9 hours while I'm at work is just right to top up and, as has been suggested by TMC battery experts before, I'm not letting the car sit at a high SOC for too long (that'd be the case if it juiced up real quick from the J1772 stations).

For that matter, once I get back home, I'm reclaiming the 27 miles overnight by dialing down to 5A (the minimum allowed by the display config in the car) even when plugged into my NEMA 14-50 at 240V.

Anyway, I'm happy to see several more LEAFs, Volts, PiPs etc. occupying a dozen more EV-only spots with 110V outlets in the parking structures. I'm happy to defer to those if need be; I wouldn't mind leaving an email address (not my primary one but, one that my phone pulls often) on the dash to help coordinate.

[EchoDelta]

An interesting suggestion to hiding your cell number seen on the TM forums: http://www.curbtxt.com/

Sweet! Thanks for sharing.

[Robert.Boston]

What would be even better than curbtxt, though, is a QCode that brings up a web page; the smartphone owner types in a message, hits Submit, and it sends that message as an SMS text to me without revealing my phone # (or the phone # of the sender).

[Robert.Boston]

An interesting mix of vehicles parked at the office garage yesterday (that's my MS on the right):

[Kipernicus]

Was counting on a 200v, 30A charge at work today (have 4 stations) but one spot has been taken by a PiP all day (not charging since 9am). The other spots have been rotating with cars, and I saw one guy eating a salad in his Leaf while waiting for a spot to open up. I've gone over there several times to see if anything opened up, because there's no way to monitor the spaces remotely.

This is not efficient. Employees wasting time jockeying for free chargers does not help the corporate bottom line.
Installing tons of 110v outlets would be nice, but also expensive.

I think the inevitable solution is to have a decent number (but not 100's) of 110v outlets scattered about the garage and charge money for the 30A EVSEs. It needs to be a time based fee, not a per-kWh fee, because if you are sitting in the spot and not charging, and not incurring any fees, where is the incentive to move the car? Counting on the good intentions of fellow employees works when the demand is low, but eventually breaks down.

[Robert.Boston]

One luxury of the Model S is that it has a large enough battery that many people won't need to charge at work. I don't know the details of your commute, @Kipernicus, but perhaps you could simply park in a regular spot and skip the at-work charging scene altogether. Munching on a salad while stalking a charging spot isn't how I'd want to spend my lunchtime!

[Kipernicus]

ah, but it's free electrons! Free makes me do crazy things, like purposely not plug in at home after a weekend of running around.
I know, I know .... but sometimes I can't help it, it's just how I am!

[childressmd]

saw one guy eating a salad in his Leaf

What else would you expect?!