After a nice drive from Parker to Longmont and back yesterday, I made my way through the Park Meadows shopping center to their four-bay SuperCharger to get a quick charge. When I got there, all of the bays were occupied. The SuperCharger bays at Park Meadows are very close to the food court entrance of the mall, so they are in a pretty convenient and desirable parking location. Three bays had Model S vehicles (with one with its charging completed), while the forth bay was occupied by a blue Tesla Roadster...
This surprised me, since Roadsters cannot use SuperChargers, and there are two HWPC available adjacent to the SuperCharger stalls. Apparently, the Roadster driver just wanted a nice parking space. It is probably worse that a Tesla driver/owner does not seem to know about proper charging behavior. So far, I have not seen any ICE vehicles actually ICEing those bays, probably because mall security seems to patrol the area pretty closely. Luckily, I was not desperate for a charge (although I was pretty low). After waiting about 10 minutes, a Tesla employee from their showroom in the mall came out to give a test drive, and I was able to pull into the bay that their demo vehicle had been using, so it was not a very big deal for me.
I guess my main point here is we need to pay attention and think about what we are doing when it comes to simply parking in a SuperCharger bay. I am afraid this will become a bigger problem as more Teslas are sold over time. It would also be nice if the Tesla mobile app would do a push notification when charging is complete, so people would know that their car was done, and then go out and move it.
This surprised me, since Roadsters cannot use SuperChargers, and there are two HWPC available adjacent to the SuperCharger stalls. Apparently, the Roadster driver just wanted a nice parking space. It is probably worse that a Tesla driver/owner does not seem to know about proper charging behavior. So far, I have not seen any ICE vehicles actually ICEing those bays, probably because mall security seems to patrol the area pretty closely. Luckily, I was not desperate for a charge (although I was pretty low). After waiting about 10 minutes, a Tesla employee from their showroom in the mall came out to give a test drive, and I was able to pull into the bay that their demo vehicle had been using, so it was not a very big deal for me.
I guess my main point here is we need to pay attention and think about what we are doing when it comes to simply parking in a SuperCharger bay. I am afraid this will become a bigger problem as more Teslas are sold over time. It would also be nice if the Tesla mobile app would do a push notification when charging is complete, so people would know that their car was done, and then go out and move it.