Yeah, this was the discussion we were having on the other thread. I can see the logic for the overstay fee on our village charge-point because there is only one charger for the village - only one car can charge at a time, and using any one of the three connectors disables the other two. It's not heavily used, you can usually get on it pretty much any time you like, but if one person decided to hog it for hours then it might as well be broken. There isn't enough demand to justify another charger, the overstay fee just makes sure you get yours and get out, which is what's needed.
If someone was desperately keen to get on the charger next they could park in the other bay (there are two parking places to allow for people to park with their charging port next to the charger) and wait to leap in when the first person disconnected, but I've never seen that happen. (I've only once found the charger to be occupied when I wanted it, and all I did was watch the app until it cleared. Every other time it's either been free when I checked the app, or I've simply rocked up at the end of a long journey and found it sitting empty.)
However the carry-on at Cambridge Street car park is a different issue. Eight type 2 connectors, and I have never seen all of them in use at once, despite checking frequently on the app - I wanted to gauge my chances of getting one when I showed up, and I now realise they are pretty much 100%. When I showed up on Thursday evening, the car park was busy because an opera performance was about to start at the nearby theatre. However all eight spaces were free. As I was getting ready to charge another guy came up and started to charge, but that was it. When I collected the car after the performance there might have been someone else on another one, but no more than that.
These are type 2 chargers, meant to allow people to recharge while they visit the city centre for shopping or entertainment. The most you could get out of one of them in four hours is probably about 40 KWh. The price is 40p per KWh, so you'd be looking at a maximum cost of a four-hour stay of maybe £15-16. (Plus £1 connection fee.) Nevertheless, if you stay on one of these a second more than four hours, you'll have a £40 overstay fee added to your bill. Immediately.
This might be justifiable if the chargers were heavily used and people were arriving to find all eight in use on a regular basis. Except it wouldn't be. This is a massive multi-storey car park in the middle of a big city that is bringing in a low-emissions zone next month. It has hundreds of parking spaces - 812 to be precise. And just eight of these - less than 1% - are equipped with charging capability. If eight are not enough, and if things go the way government wants them to go then eight will not be enough some fine day, then install some more!!
But at the moment the things are mostly standing empty most of the time. This may well be because the average punter who drives into Glasgow for shopping or a meal out or the theatre hasn't come all that far and doesn't need to recharge before going home. (I saw a couple of EVs in ordinary parking places, not charging.) In that situation, what on earth is the incentive to bully your customers into aborting their charge after taking on 40KWh? That £40 penalty is doing nobody any good. It's only making people rush back to their cars to move them away from a charger that nobody else needs or wants, when they could be paying ChargePlace Scotland for another hour or two's electricity. It's a lousy business model.
