I am a new (less than one month) Leaf driver in the Los Angeles area. I seriously debated with myself whether I should go for Leaf or stay conservative with Volt; but I think I made really a better choice!
Anyway, our family took a one-day trip to the Aquarium of Pacific in Long Beach, which is 50 miles away from my home. This was our first Leaf trip where we "needed to" charge the car away from home. I had read up a lot of info and documents online and elsewhere so I knew what to expect, including the ICE problem.
PlugShare showed bunch of charging spots in Long Beach, including the parking lot of the Aquarium. The stations in the lot were "Available" according to PlugShare. But sure enough, when we got to the parking lot, all spots were either ICEd or used by other EVs that are not plugged in. The spots are marked as "No Parking Except For Electric Vehicle Charing", but this is LA and people aren't necessarily into reading. Luckily, a parking attendant made a "spot" behind a column for us and we got to use a charge station. But we only found this out when we have entered gated, non-free, parking structure. As far as I'm concerned, this uncertainty is the major source of the thing called "range anxiety"; it is not about range, but a feeling of not knowing what to do until very last minutes.
People talk about adding more charging stations. Sure, that is absolutely important, but besides that it'd be great to fix the under-utilization problem of existing stations. One obvious step is to have a way to make the "no parking except..." rule be known and effective. This involves education but also involves (unfortunately) more strict enforcement. When I talked to the parking attendants, they said that the Long Beach police used to come often and gave tickets but not doing it recently. Would I better have called the police by myself? A colleague of mine mentioned about citizen's arrest on reckless driving. Is there something similar that is applicable to parking situation? On some streets close to beaches in Santa Monica and Venice Beach, they enforce the parking violation rule quite strictly. (The reason, of course, must be to protect the citizens, but perhaps some people might say that generating easy revenue is a reason as well.) How do we as a society build the "norm" of this for EV parking spots?
Anyway, our family took a one-day trip to the Aquarium of Pacific in Long Beach, which is 50 miles away from my home. This was our first Leaf trip where we "needed to" charge the car away from home. I had read up a lot of info and documents online and elsewhere so I knew what to expect, including the ICE problem.
PlugShare showed bunch of charging spots in Long Beach, including the parking lot of the Aquarium. The stations in the lot were "Available" according to PlugShare. But sure enough, when we got to the parking lot, all spots were either ICEd or used by other EVs that are not plugged in. The spots are marked as "No Parking Except For Electric Vehicle Charing", but this is LA and people aren't necessarily into reading. Luckily, a parking attendant made a "spot" behind a column for us and we got to use a charge station. But we only found this out when we have entered gated, non-free, parking structure. As far as I'm concerned, this uncertainty is the major source of the thing called "range anxiety"; it is not about range, but a feeling of not knowing what to do until very last minutes.
People talk about adding more charging stations. Sure, that is absolutely important, but besides that it'd be great to fix the under-utilization problem of existing stations. One obvious step is to have a way to make the "no parking except..." rule be known and effective. This involves education but also involves (unfortunately) more strict enforcement. When I talked to the parking attendants, they said that the Long Beach police used to come often and gave tickets but not doing it recently. Would I better have called the police by myself? A colleague of mine mentioned about citizen's arrest on reckless driving. Is there something similar that is applicable to parking situation? On some streets close to beaches in Santa Monica and Venice Beach, they enforce the parking violation rule quite strictly. (The reason, of course, must be to protect the citizens, but perhaps some people might say that generating easy revenue is a reason as well.) How do we as a society build the "norm" of this for EV parking spots?