Real-life electric car ownership experience

by philg

What if you own (or lease) an electric car and can’t charge it at home? This Technology Review article describes what it is like.

I charge my car in public parks and mall parking structures around Los Angeles, using a diversity of charging networks run by startups such as Chargepoint and Blink. I typically pay $5 to $10 to charge up. Every single station has been, for years, mediocre to terrible. The stations are often broken due to software or hardware problems, and remain out of service for weeks. Competition among electric car drivers for these public charging stations is fierce and intensifying. It’s practically impossible for me to find an open charging station during the day.

Even so, I see Teslas parked alongside Nissan Leafs, Chevy Volts, electric Ford Fusions, and electric Fiats like mine every time I visit my local public charge stations in Los Angeles (about every other day). I’ll often end up helping a confused and harried Tesla driver operate the charger. If I mention the free supercharger stations available only to them, they usually seem vaguely aware of them, but either don’t have enough charge left to reach one or can’t be bothered to drive out of their way.

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6 thoughts on “Real-life electric car ownership experience”

  1. This problem should be easy to fix — if it is not fixed already.

    Network the charging stations with each other and with the electric cars and let the cars find a close by available station. The car should be able to know when it need to be charged and call out to the driver of available stations, et. al.

    Make the station “smart” so that if it is broken, it will “call home” for service. Enact a legislation that requires charging stations that are broken be fixed within 48 hours.

    We already have policies that gas stations are inspected, unannounced, to make sure they are working “properly”, the same need to be done for electrical charging stations.

  2. I live in So Cal and bought a Ford Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid so I could use the HOV lane. Public charging is a waste of time. Every public charge point I go to is fully utilized. Who has time to run move the car during work hours? Besides, the charge rate at a charge point is 2x what I pay at home.

  3. It’s the old problem of multifamily housing not allowing installation of a 220V charging station, but single family houses now cost over $2 million. Anyone who can afford a house which allows installing a charging station could dispense with a car & just fly an R44.

  4. You mean:

    Tesla (v.) from home to helipad.
    Fly to work.
    Work to keep R44 filled & ready.
    Heli (v.) back to Tesla (n.).
    Tesla (v.) to charge station @ home.
    (Blog about FX of immigration).

    Got it.

  5. I own/drive a Tesla Model S. I wouldn’t have considered buying one if I couldn’t charge at home.

    jack crossfire — I infer that you live in Palo Alto, CA or a similar location, perhaps near Boston (Phil’s locale). The median home price in the U.S. is less than $200K (http://www.zillow.com/home-values/ ).

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