EVDRIVER said:
I know people will disagree with this but many drivers will burden the dealership and they are not designed to be a public charging location. Why not just avoid dealers. Why do people need to do this anyway? I have been driving an EVs for over seven years and I have been fine without this.
I've been driving an EV for over 4 months now and I thought I needed extra charge just one time. As it turned out I didn't really need it, but I wasn't yet comfortable with what the gauges meant in terms of actual miles on the road. And I'm happy to say that my dealer, Mossy Nissan, is one of the most friendly and accommodating dealers around.
So I conclude it is pretty much okay to have very little public charging infrastructure for today's EV drivers -
all 0.003% of us. But I think Nissan was not content to win 0.003% of the car market, and so to shoot for 0.3% or even more of the market they set up their dealer network as a stopgap public charging infrastructure to make those tens of thousands of new EV drivers feel confident enough to ditch the gas tank. By summer of 2011 the EV Project will have installed 14,000 chargers and people will naturally prefer to charge at comfortable shopping venues than at car dealers. (What? You say summer 2011 has already passed? And now we have a grand total of 2 EV Project charging locations in San Diego?) Well, it looks like the dealers are going to have to fill the gap for a little while longer.
if you don't know the story and stop in then act like you are a guest. The entitled and rude will ruin it for the rest of us.
I wonder how many problem drivers there really are - people who would give up hours of their time to get $1 worth of free electricity. But I have no doubt that some dealers probably get way more than their share of problems due to locations that make them the only charging spot along strategic heavily traveled routes. And I'll bet that Santa Monica Nissan is a dealer that gets more than its share of problems. Months ago I thought Nissan should avoid such problems by setting nationwide rules and expectations for charging, with chargeback to dealers like for warranty work, financed by a modest price increase on all our cars.
If it really were a serious problem for many dealers though, they would become motivated enough to develop a charging policy and communicate it through signs, email, and forum postings. E.g., it's not unreasonable for drivers without an existing business relationship with the dealer to fill out a contact form and liability release; for service to have priority over customers; for reservations to have priority over drop-ins; for drivers to leave their keys in case the car has to be moved; to pay; etc. It would be better for the dealers collectively to set uniform policies nationwide so everyone could know what to expect. But at least any dealers who are having extraordinary troubles with laissez-faire charging could be expected to take some action to address their troubles. And for any dealers who do
not want to have random drivers directed to them for charging by their NAV systems, Nissan should offer them an easy opt-out of the Carwings database.
We'll never know who was more at fault in this particular incident, nor is it our place to judge. I do not think this thread should be deleted as someone suggested. But I do think a much better title for the thread would be something like "Carwings lists chargers which are not public"
