Queuing Up For a Charge, by Eric Peters

Tesla is introducing electronic charger line control. Seems that line jumping has become a problem. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

The wait to recharge a device is making it hard to sell devices to people uninterested in waiting around for a device to recover charge. Compounding the problem is the wait for those ahead in line to finish charging their devices.

You’ve already been waiting for half an hour or longer to plug your device in while the device ahead of you finishes charging. At last, that device unplugs and now it’s your device’s turn! Except the owner of another device beat you to the umbilicus – and plugged in his device.

Fight have broken out over this.

Understandably. It is called charge  rage.

Most people haven’t  got the additional time to wait – on top of the time they’ve already spent waiting. And they’re already testy on account of that.

Also, many EV charge stations are not designed intelligently – like gas stations – to accommodate queues. At a gas station, you pull up behind someone else, who pulls away after they’re done filling up. At many “fast” charging locations, you pull up (or back into) a parking spot – because of course you’ll be there for awhile – and plug into the totem pole. Device owners sometimes leave their device there to charge while they go somewhere else in the meanwhile.

When the device finally finishes charging – or rather, when it has finished partially charging, as it’s not possible to fully charge a device “fast” – its owner pulls it out or backs it out, leaving an open spot for other device drivers to fight over the spot, like a busy shopping mall parking lot.

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