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Iced Ellensburg Supercharger

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On Sunday April 26, I ran into 3 Model S owners who had just charged or were charging at the Ellensburg Supercharger. We were all dismayed that there were 2-3 (depending upon the time) ICE cars occupying charging spots. I contacted Washington State Patrol to ask who would be in charge of citing them, since WA has a law against cars not charging occupying an EV charging site. They directed me to the Ellensburg Police Dept, since they would be the first "line of defense" against such violations. I was pleasantly surprised that I got an immediate response from them. They said that they will post signage "stating the fine for parking in a charging station and have also requested the City of Ellensburg paint the required green paint on the stalls" for the Roadster charging site in downtown Ellensburg. Since the Supercharger is on private property, they said that they will have to check with the property owners about the best way to enforce the law there. I thought that that was a really prompt and nice response.
 
Hi Kazumi, we were talking to you when we were there. My girlfriend told the people inside the hotel but I don't think they did anything. Hopefully they put up some signs as that was a little ridiculous. There was plenty of open parking spots in area. The public charging station was ICEd too.
 
They aren't going to do anything about the signage or lines. The proper signage and green lines used to be there (if you dig around you can find pictures with it up and if you look around the white lines you'll see the green lines slightly). But were removed. I'd bet that they were removed at the request of the property owner. At least one of the slots is signed to allow non-charging parking for up to 30 minutes there anyway, which is also probably at the request of the property owner.
 
I had this happen to me last spring except it was around 10pm and every stall was ICED. I did however speak to the owner of the hotel he's very nice and said that they'd address this and their work around was that they'd have the manager on duty parking in one of the spots so it can be moved if need be. I can't remember his name or his phone # but you can get it from the hotel itself as he did say if we have any problems again he'd like to know about it personally.
 
I had this happen to me last spring except it was around 10pm and every stall was ICED. I did however speak to the owner of the hotel he's very nice and said that they'd address this and their work around was that they'd have the manager on duty parking in one of the spots so it can be moved if need be. I can't remember his name or his phone # but you can get it from the hotel itself as he did say if we have any problems again he'd like to know about it personally.

I guess we have to hope that there will never be two Teslas wanting to charge at the same time. Cones would be better.
 
This concerns me as I will be taking that route sometime this spring. I don't want to have a long delay because of ICEing - that will seriously reduce my families interest in the MS as a roadtrip vehicle. It might be nice if TMC put webcams' on the spaces so we can tell if they are ICE'd when we will have other charging options.
 
We have a thread with 60 posts on this topic here: Completely ICEd at Ellensburg Superchargers! Grrr

Skyhawk summarized in Dec 2014:
I just re-read the entire thread because I don't think this is much of a problem. It appears there was only one case on July 21 when someone was completely blocked from charging. Before and since then others have always been able to charge. I live about 100 miles from Ellensburg, but stop there when transiting to/from Seattle area. In approximately 8 times, I have only seen one instance of ICEing when a pickup towing a jet ski was parked there less than 5 minutes while the owner ran to Starbuck's while I was charging.


Since fairly frequent users, like me, always can charge there, even if one or two slots are ICEd, I don't think this a a much of an issue especially since the hotel and Tesla seem to have addressed the problem since July.
 
I am hoping that jurisdictions will begin to support us and enforce this rude and tacky parking with towing or fines. The thing the ICEs don't realise is that we are screwed if we cannot park and charge. I must say that I am shocked at how inconsiderate people are. I would never park an ICE in an EV slot. Even before owning my MS, I didn't do it.

And I am surprised (pleasantly) that there is not a lot of vandalism to those offenders. It shows that we are above what they are doing to us.
 
They are required to be properly marked with green paint as per Washington State Law. State Law also considers the property public because the public is welcome to do business with the proprietor.

There may not be a big problem now, but it will be worse in the summer and it could be a big problem once I-90 cross country route is completely linked to I-5. That shouldn't be too far away from completion.
 
I've used the eburg SC a number of times and never once saw it ICEd. As the previous thread on the topic clearly demonstrated, ICEing is the exception, not the rule. Also, I think that when more Teslas are charging there, the number of ICEings will decrease as people will see the SC in use. My reasoning is that ICE people will park there when they see all the stalls empty - when there are stalls in use they will think twice about it. It's easier to justify if "nobody uses those chargers". One of the few ICEings I've ever seen (not at eburg) ended when the owner returned and actually apologized for parking there.
 
I've found 1-2 ICE cars there about 50% of the times I've been there, but I've never been unable to charge and I've never seen someone else have to wait. As I've said many times before the spot nearest the entrance to the hotel is allowed to be used by anyone for up to 30 minutes.

So while I think it would be nice if Tesla and the property owners would properly sign the spots to discourage ICE'ing them. So far it hasn't been a huge problem. I can think of a lot of other things that are probably more important for Tesla to deal with in my opinion. For example, providing a way to get down to the I-70 route without going to California from Washington.
 
This is how you prevent ICEing at Ellensburg (or any SC, for that matter).
20150531_125028.jpg

Fill it with Teslas! This was on Sunday 5/31 around 12:30PM. As I was leaving another one was pulling in.

I also used it on Friday in the afternoon - was the only one there and no ICEing.

By the way, of the 4 teslas there, only one had a front license plate. Even the guy pulling in as I left didn't have one.
 
This is how you prevent ICEing at Ellensburg (or any SC, for that matter).
View attachment 82744
Fill it with Teslas! This was on Sunday 5/31 around 12:30PM. As I was leaving another one was pulling in.

I also used it on Friday in the afternoon - was the only one there and no ICEing.

By the way, of the 4 teslas there, only one had a front license plate. Even the guy pulling in as I left didn't have one.

I like it. Beats the the other form of anti-icing that many of us are used to:

Watch: Beet juice anti-icing agent is a "sweet success" in Williams Lake - BC | Globalnews.ca

I need to visit Ellensburgh and help with your anti-icing.
 
I arrived at the Ellensburg supercharger about 30 minutes ago to find it completely iced. Management at the front desk of the hotel just told me "What do you expect us to do? We can't go wake up our customers one by one to find who parked there."

Tesla needs to do something about this location. Out of my three visits here, twice it has been completely iced and once all but one stall was iced.
 
I arrived at the Ellensburg supercharger about 30 minutes ago to find it completely iced. Management at the front desk of the hotel just told me "What do you expect us to do? We can't go wake up our customers one by one to find who parked there."
Do hotels still require your license plate number when checking in or is that only if you don't book online in advance? If they still collected that information, they could quickly determine which guests are parked in those spots and then give the offending parties a nice wake up call.
 
Do hotels still require your license plate number when checking in or is that only if you don't book online in advance? If they still collected that information, they could quickly determine which guests are parked in those spots and then give the offending parties a nice wake up call.

Good question. My guess is no, but I could be wrong.

So, I just went back into the hotel and was additionally told that "Tesla doesn't pay us for those spaces, and our agreement with them is that our hotel guests come first. We won't ask them to move and if they ask about parking there, we tell them it is fine."

Wow.

I just called Tesla and was told they've never heard of any issues with icing at Ellensburg. That's hard to believe since this is the 3rd time I've called myself. All but one space is clearly marked "Electric vehicle parking only". I can't imagine this many people are using these parking spots without the hotel actually telling their guests to do so.