The Blink type 2 chargers outside my friend's house are in free, unrestricted parking spaces - it's a small car park next to a park where people walk their dogs and play ball games with their children. The EV charging points are often ICEd up and nobody is fining the ICE car owners for blocking the chargers. (It's possible the owners of these cars don't realise what they're doing, because there's nothing painted on the tarmac of the parking bays, only a small sign a bit above eye level.)
The car park is empty overnight, when the dog-walkers and the tennis players have gone home. There is zero reason why someone couldn't charge overnight there. There is also zero reason why they couldn't charge as long as they like during the day, because there's nothing to prevent an ICE car sitting in the space all day (or the EV driver simply unplugging the car and walking away, leaving it where it is).
My friend says she hardly ever sees EVs charging there (though she did see a white MG4 a week or two before I arrived). I didn't see another EV in all the three days I stayed with her. It's as if the operators have imagined EVs queueing up to get on a charger, but it's not happening. People living nearby with EVs have wall boxes. People coming to the park probably have wall boxes too. It's a facility for occasional use, with drivers discouraged by the very high price.
But here I am, a visitor staying at a house without a wall box, arriving after a journey of 190 miles, willing to pay their extortionate price for the convenience. They should be cherishing me, the only EV to want their electricity that week as far as I know. Instead, they limit me to four hours.
That's not good. It's an unreasonable amount of time to allow given that it's the evening.
The chargers used to be free to use, and maybe that's the reason for the time limit. But frankly I doubt they had hordes of EVs even at that time due to the cost of the parking itself.
The car park is very expensive during the day, as it's right next to all the big offices and department stores. If a driver is prepared to pay these prices, what's the point in limiting his time on an EV charger? If the chargers are over-subscribed, install more! (But they're not.)
In the evening there is a flat-rate charge, £4 to stay as long as you like from 6 pm until 8 am. This is great for the nearby theatres (the Theatre Royal and the Athenaeum) and all the fancy eateries in the surrounding streets. Mostly you could probably go to a performance and get back to your car within four hours - I managed it when the performance was
Carmen. But if they put on a Wagner opera for example, it's going to be a case of running out to unplug the car during one of the intervals. Same if you fancy a pre-theatre meal.
I mean, £40 the second you click over the four-hour mark? What are they punishing people for?
Fortunately my usual trip to that car park is only 100 miles round trip, so I won't normally need to charge there. Most people are probably coming into town from closer than that, which is probably why the chargers are so little used. But I had to use them one day because I had a very tight schedule and was driving on to stay in a hotel on the coast that evening. And in the winter, if the weather is bad, I might feel safer in an SR getting some charge while I'm there. But they're not making it easy for me.
I've actually emailed ChargePlace Scotland about the £40 fines, citing as an example longer operas at the nearby Theatre Royal, and even when there is a shorter performance, wanting to have a meal before the opera. I've asked them why they want to force people to fret about time, and maybe run back to their cars during the interval in the dark and the rain, to unplug what might well be the only car charging in the car park. I've talked about encouraging people to stay in the city centre and spend more money.
I've talked about the future necessity of providing a sufficient number of EV-equipped parking bays to meed demand (in the Low Emissions Zone), and how counter-productive it is to try to manage demand by punitive fines. (There are only eight connectors in that car park, which has over 800 parking spaces.) I've talked about making the car park a welcoming place for EV drivers, who are after all (during the day) paying the steep car park charges just like everyone else, rather than a source of stress and worry and fretting about time.
We'll see what they say.
