Unplugged by another S owner...

[dtich]

This is the card I use (along with a paper clip):

@mknox, cool. i like the calming, natural world-centric bg image! lol.

you use this mostly for your charger at work, yes?


you inspired me on the colors, which i meant to do but the need for the placard hadn't come up so i forgot about it... thx.

 

[mknox]

@mknox, cool. i like the calming, natural world-centric bg image! lol.

you use this mostly for your charger at work, yes?


you inspired me on the colors, which i meant to do but the need for the placard hadn't come up so i forgot about it... thx.

I didn't mean to imply that I created that card... I just found it online somewhere and couldn't remember where.

I had been using a restricted area charger at work (for one of our fleet vehicles) but was getting some sideways looks from other employees, so I rarely do that any more.

I laminated this card and keep it in the glove box for use at public stations. I should be able to do a quick calculation to see how much time I need to reach my destination and then can show that time on the card. This way, some one could unplug me while I'm still charging, and as long as they only do so on or after the time indicated, I should be okay. There is a spot for my cell phone number as well.

 

[dflye]

Hi all, I'm the owner of the other Model S involved in the charging drama at the Richmond VA Omni Monday morning.

As with many encounters, each party involved will have their version of the event, with some common ground and some discrepancies.

We were traveling back home to Raleigh NC from a July 4th weekend in the Boston area, and had decided after charging at the Newark DE supercharger that we'd continue on to the Richmond area and use the 70A charger at the Omni if available, falling back to the 30A ChargePoint at the science museum a few miles down the road if needed.

We arrived with about 14 miles of range left, and had about 150 miles to go, so plan was to charge to about 165 then hit the road.

Arriving in the garage at about 7:30 AM, we found a blue 85 with tinted windows and custom plate parked in the spot adjacent to the charger, so we parked in the EV spot beside that.

First thing we did, we checked the car and charger for a note, didn't find one.

Next thing we did, I walked up to the front desk and asked if they knew if the person charging was an overnight guest checking out, or some transient like ourselves. Gal there said she didn't know, and suggested asking the valets.

So next I talked with the valets, who had no knowledge of the whereabouts of the owner either. The one guy says they've valet parked a grand total of one Model S so far, apparently most folks just self park in the garage, even though the charger is located in the valet section.

Final step we took before switching the charging cable from their car to ours at about 7:55: I took a look at the charger's display on the wall, and could have sworn it indicated it wasn't charging. Given that it was in a dark garage and I wasn't wearing my reading glasses, it is entirely possible that I misread the display and charging was going on at the time. :crying:

If there had been a note left indicating that scheduled charging was planned, even if the charger indicated no charging was taking place, we would have attempted to juggle our schedule to line up with theirs.

But, no note on car or charger, no info left with valet or front desk... and with my apparently bleary eyes from driving all night, we yanked the cable prematurely it appears, and I'm definitely sorry that took place, and apologize for any inconvenience that may have caused. :redface:

However, to reuse the term you used that really stuck in my wife's head, it is really "uncool" to hog a charger without leaving a note.

Somewhere around 8:30 AM, wife and son went down to the car to fetch some toy son wanted to play with while I stayed in the restaurant. As my wife came back somewhat distraught from the garage encounter, after much debate we simply paid the $7 in parking for the hour or so we were there, and moved down the road to spend many hours at the slower ChargePoint charger at the science museum.

Finally got up to 160 miles after about 6 hours killing time in the area on foot (walked to a nearby cinema and saw a movie, had ice cream at the Dairy Bar a few blocks from there and then back to the car to hang out until we were comfortable with the charge level)

As to notes, wife left a lengthy note on our dash indicating exactly what we had done and when, with name and phone number where we could be reached.

Can't wait for the supercharger in the Richmond area to open up! :biggrin:

 

[dsm363]

dflye: you did much more than most would have done so nice work. One of those learning experiences for everyone I guess but too bad you weren't notified that the EVSE was free at 10AM so you could have used it.

Should we (by we I mean someone else with design skills) create a TMC laminated card for this purpose? There are already many mentioned in this thread so not necessary.

 

[dsm363]

scaesare: how many miles did you have at 8:30AM that morning and do you have the twin chargers?

 

[scaesare]

Let me be the first to offer my apologies if your wife was offended. I was surprised that someone would do that and believe I did state that, but it appears it was an honest mistake.

Given that the car owner was there, I didn't opt to look in the windows, and therefore didn't see the note.

That having been said, I appreciate your having gone to the lengths you did prior.

I've certainly learned something in the experience, and will do what I can to make sure I use the resources we all have to share as judiciously as possible. I'll say however, that I wouldn't consider attempting to get a full charge overnight "hogging" a charger.

I appreciate you chiming in dflye, and next time we are down there at the same time, I'll buy you a beer.

 

[dsm363]

Glad everyone worked this out. Trying to get a full charge overnight definitely isn't hogging a charger so nothing wrong there.

 

[joshuaeven]

I guess it would be prudent to indicate not only when your charge is expected to be completed, but if you are timing the initiation of the charge to get your topped off in the morning, you would need to communicate both the start time and expected end time. Having a little laminated card with the room to display this info would be great if we can get everyone to use one.

 

[scaesare]

scaesare: how many miles did you have at 8:30AM that morning and do you have the twin chargers?

I had on the order of 220 miles on the pack @8:30. We were doing a round trip down to Norfolk, then to near Virginia beach, and then had to trek back up to home outside of Washington DC that day, hence the Range charge.

I do have twin chargers, and was getting a ~40miles/hr charge rate from the Omni unit.

 

[xray]

I am interested in others thoughts on this type of situation. If I am going to sleep for eight hours, but the car only needs four hours to charge to full, should I really set an alarm for the middle of the night, get up, go unplug, and move the car? If not, what is the difference between charging immediately or setting a delayed charge?

In my opinion, the answer is yes. That's exactly what I did while charging in Las Vegas. Those resorts only have a couple of chargers so I set my alarm and walked down to the car at 2 am and moved my car out of the EV spot despite the fact that the other spot was also empty.

You never know when someone is going to pull up at 3 am and need to charge. Unless there are 10 stalls and even then, its the principle that this is a limited resource.

 

[dflye]

Thanks for the offer, may have to take you up on that! (although if / when there is a supercharger in the Richmond area, we'd be going through there vs stopping at the Omni)

Wife says she wasn't truly offended by anything you said, she was just caught off guard, and being somewhat EV-stupid (her words, not mine!), she didn't know to discuss what we'd attempted to verify and the possibility that you had scheduled charging. So she was telling me this morning that she is more upset at herself for not simply defusing the situation as it was encountered, versus it turning into a lengthy online debate.

One problem I have had with charging in parking garages: I can't remotely check the status of charging when parked deep in the bowels of a garage like the Potomac garage in Crystal City near the airport, where we'd left the car on the northbound part of our trip. That definitely would make automation / notification of charging status of other cars in queue for shared spots a challenge.

I like the idea of a semi-standard printed form to toss on the dash when leaving the car to charge.

We had a few other interesting charging challenges on the road, as during the trip we primarily stayed at hotels near Tesla stores to take advantage of the charging facilities there. This worked great at the Roosevelt Field mall store in Garden City NY, as they had multiple HPWC and 14-50 plugs, so we were able to add enough miles when we checked into the hotel to get to the fireworks in NYC (an entirely different saga as I'd forgotten how much "fun" one has driving and parking in the city, especially during an event that draws a huge crowd) and then dropped the car off at midnight when we finally got back to the hotel. I got up early to move the car back to the hotel when it was fully charged, as I wasn't subjecting the rest of the family to the short hike from hotel to mall (a bit of a seedy area between the two late at night, at least from walking back to the hotel after midnight)

However, getting a charge at the Natick Mall outside Boston was a bit more challenging on our 2nd night in that area, as they only have two HPWC there and no 14-50 plugs, even though they have 5 or 6 parking spots in the Tesla-themed parking area. So even though we arrived there well past the mall closing time and 4 of the 6 parking spots were available, the two demo cars were plugged in to charge overnight. And those plugs cannot be switched around unless the victim car is unlocked.

So I ended up calling Tesla Roadside support a bit after midnight, he looked up the VINs of the 2 cars to see if one was a car he was authorized to remotely unlock, verified that car had enough charge so I wouldn't affect their test drives the next day, and he then unlocked the car long enough so that I could move the plug to my car. We agreed that I should leave the charging port open on the demo car, so that way I was able to plug the demo car back in when I came and got my car about 6AM when it finished charging.

This first long road trip in a Model S for us was definitely a learning experience on many fronts! We traveled about 1,800 miles over 5 days, used 564.2 kWh (314 Wh/mi average), and used a mixture of SuperChargers, Tesla store charging and public charging (although unlike the free ChargePoint chargers we've used around NC in the past, all the ones in the NE cost at least 0.70/hr to charge)

The SuperCharger stops ended up taking longer than we'd expected, over 90 minutes vs the hour we'd expected. Gave us plenty of time to play some card games in the travel centers!

 

[scaesare]

I did have some trouble connecting to the car from the mobile app in the under ground parking garage as well. Probably not a whole lot that can be done when relying on cellular signal for that data connection.

We also decided to try and make the trip all the way back home from Norfolk, and thus used a Nissan charger at a dealership down there (thanks to Norfolk Nissan on Military Highway for being accommodating!), however it was my first experience in how slow a 30amp charger really is... 17mi/hr charge rate isn't much when you have ~220 miles to go an only 150 or so in the pack... I actually ended up calling the Omni on the way back to see if the charger was free and plugging in on the way back for an hour.

We also used the DE Superchargers for the first time 2 weeks ago (4 times total), and yes, they do take a while to get that last few % of remaining charge in. Here's hoping for the new 120KW units, and the speedy installation of the Richmond area station.

As an aside, I replied to Omni's survey email recommending they consider additional EV stations (see post HERE), hopefully the more hotels hear about this, the less common contention for the stations will be.

 

[lloyds]

Yesterday, as I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a lady going around trying to unplug other plugged in vehicles for their BMW. It just felt too disrespectful of others property, so I rolled my window down to ask what she's doing. She told me that there's another lot close by and that I should go there for charge. WTF??? I told her you can't touch other people's car like that to which she replied, "they're done charging". "if you keep doing that I'm going to have to call security" - she got into her bmw and left after I said that.

 

[Crispix]

EV etiquette is new to me (and to most of us) and part of the Tesla experience is knowing that stuff is going to happen. I don't have my car yet and I am anxiously counting the days. I really like this thread and that both owners have had a chance to chime in.

Right/wrong is not perhaps not worth arguing -- how to handle situations like this, however, is pretty interesting.

Things I've learned from this thread:
1. If someone is cool enough to drive an EV (especially a Model S!), I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.
2. I'll also leave a note with my cell# when charging and will welcome a text msg or phone call.
3. I won't hesitate to contact someone if they leave a note.
4. While I want everything to go to plan when on a road-trip, I fully understand that being on the cutting edge means that stuff is going to happen and delays will be part of the experience.
5. Don't schedule a charge in a public spot. Juice up immediately. in regards to this thread, see #1.

 

[efusco]

While I certainly expect people to respect my property and not unplug my vehicle when charging, if one chooses to use a public charger in a public place and you're not actively charging, you better expect that people will unplug you. If that's not acceptable, the you'd best not use public charging...it's the "public" bit that I'm emphasizing here. By all means, leave a note, ask to be called, use a charger lock, whatever...and you can be pissy and self-rightous if you want, but if I need a charge and you're not charging, I'm unplugging you...get over it.

 

[brianstorms]

(For those with privacy concerns, you could sign up for a free Google Voice phone number and provide that on the note. Then go into Google Voice and set it up so it wakes up your phone when someone calls. That way you get alerted to the issue going on at the charger, but you aren't plastering your cell number in a parking garage for all to see.)

 

[Joel]

While I certainly expect people to respect my property and not unplug my vehicle when charging, if one chooses to use a public charger in a public place and you're not actively charging, you better expect that people will unplug you. If that's not acceptable, the you'd best not use public charging...it's the "public" bit that I'm emphasizing here. By all means, leave a note, ask to be called, use a charger lock, whatever...but you can be pissy and self-rightous if you want, but if I need a charge and you're not charging, I'm unplugging you...get over it.

+1

Also, if it's a J1772 public charger, no one will be able to remove Tesla's J1772 adapter (or close the charge port).

 

[dflye]

It would be nice if Tesla themselves became an advocate for some standards of use for public chargers, whether SuperChargers, chargers at Tesla facilities or generic public chargers out in the wild.

Having a common format sign readily filled out and displayed when leaving the car to charge would be great.

Adding some 3rd party to obfuscate the person's name / number would be ever better for those concerned about public display of their cell number, whether though some URL shortening / redirecting service that tracks access logs.

Tesla should then include that information on public charging standards with each new vehicle they manufacture, and hopefully also include some sturdily constructed reusable sign to be displayed on the vehicle's dash.

This must have come up in the past with the Volt, Leaf or other EVs, but I guess it isn't such a big deal for hybrid cars as it is for BEVs.

Is there a common protocol used by other EV owner groups?

 

[mknox]

With respect to unplugging cars, doesn't the Chevy Volt start alarming if the car is locked and the cable is unplugged? I used our company Volt for a week and it seems it did that one time in my garage at home. Scared the crap out of me because it uses the car's horn, the port is near the front of the car and I was in an enclosed garage. Do other EVs do this as well?

Is this not also a risk when unplugging someone else's car (especially at a hotel in the middle of the night)?

 

[efusco]

With respect to unplugging cars, doesn't the Chevy Volt start alarming if the car is locked and the cable is unplugged? I used our company Volt for a week and it seems it did that one time in my garage at home. Scared the crap out of me because it uses the car's horn, the port is near the front of the car and I was in an enclosed garage. Do other EVs do this as well?

Is this not also a risk when unplugging someone else's car (especially at a hotel in the middle of the night)?

It's an optional setting...the car will also send you an alert (not sure if it's a text or an alert from their app) if charging is stopped...that's something that should, ASAP, be added to the Tesla App, IMO.