Imagine, for a minute, you pull into a gas station near your workplace in the morning with your gas warning light on and a long drive ahead of you after work. You drive toward the pumps hoping to fill up, but every one of them is occupied ? and the drivers of all the other cars have wandered off to chat or buy something in the convenience store, so that every hose is in use.
Except that some of the cars? tanks have filled up since they sauntered away.
Now, imagine that this isn?t a momentary situation but that the other drivers will not return for hours.
Do you:
(a) Resign yourself to not doing the drive after work?
(b) Go in search of the other drivers and ask to use their hoses?
(c) Take a hose out of someone else?s gas tank and put it in your own?
Welcome to the brave new world of electric car ownership, which can often mean encountering such a dilemma in places like Sacramento?s city hall parking garage, where the single row of charging spaces is nearly always full on weekdays ? mostly with electric cars, but sometimes with what the electricati are calling ?I.C.E.?s? (for internal combustion engines).
Indeed, an academic paper has already been prepared on the subject by Nicolette Caperello and Kenneth S. Kurani, researchers at the University of California, Davis.
They and her colleagues did more than 20 in-depth interviews with drivers of electric vehicles, asking questions like whether a person using a retailer?s charging space has an obligation to shop there, or how co-workers at a company that provides a charging facility handle the issue of freeing up plugs.
In the latter case, the paper said, one company?s employees worked out their own system.
The P.E.V. [plug-in electric vehicle] drivers created a system of rules for charging. The primary rule seems to be ?first come, first serve,? but this is subject to several conditions. They have created rules and processes to handle exceptions, e.g., someone needs to charge to get somewhere else during the day. In these instances, the person wanting to charge their car sends an e-mail to a listserv of P.E.V. drivers to see if someone who is parked at or connected to a Level 1 outlet or Level 2 charger can make it available. These requests are generally granted.
Electronic media makes communications easier, one interviewee said.
Drivers have developed a Wiki?a Web site that allows anyone to revise content using only a Web browser ? to communicate with each other.?it?s a Wiki so anyone can edit it?generally it [has] questions about when spots are available and people talk about the [charger] software, what to expect as a new driver, vacating a spot, plug in whoever is on deck, it?s all a little community.?
Sandra Berg, a member of the California Air Resources Board, brought up the issue at a board hearing on Thursday, reporting that when there is a space for her Nissan Leaf but no plug, she will choose option (c) if the other car?s battery is full.
She said she then leaves a note on the other car?s windshield saying, ?I noticed you were fully charged and I needed a charge to get to my destination and so I unplugged your car. I wanted you to know why your charger was unattached.? She signs the note and gives her e-mail address, she added.
So far, no one has e-mailed her to bless her action or denounce it. But, based on an informal survey she has taken of other drivers at places like the Sacramento parking lot or the lots at Los Angeles International Airport, she estimated that about six out of 10 drivers say ?Fine? and the other four say ?Don?t touch my car!?
When there are no spaces and no available plugs, she said, she takes her car to the nearest Nissan dealership and leaves it there to charge.
According to a report released last month by California?s Plug-In Electric Vehicle Collaborative, an estimated 35,000 electric vehicles have been sold nationwide, half of them in California. And NRG, a company that inherited the debts of Dynegy in California, has agreed to build $100 million worth of electric-car infrastructure as recompense related to a lawsuit in which the state claimed that Dynegy overcharged it in a power contract.
As part of the agreement ? which is now being challenged by other companies that build electric-car infrastructure ? NRG pledged to build hundreds of fast-charging stations in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Los Angeles area and the Central Valley and at least 10,000 individual charging stations like the ones now being filled up in the Sacramento parking garage.
But as long as electric vehicles have small driving ranges and parking areas have limited charging offers, the whose-plug-is-it problem is likely to get worse, not better.
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