Matt Richtel reports at the NY Times that the push to make the state
greener with electric cars is have an unintended side effect:
It is
making some people meaner. The bad moods stem from the challenges drivers face finding recharging spots for their battery-powered cars.
Unlike gas stations, charging stations are not yet in great supply, and
that has led to sharp-elbowed competition. According to Richtel
electric-vehicle owners are unplugging one another’s cars, trading
insults, and creating black markets and side deals to trade spots in
corporate parking lots.
The too-few-outlets problem is a familiar one in
crowded cafes and airports, where people want to charge their phones or
laptops. But the need can be more acute with cars — will their owners
have enough juice to make it home? — and manners often go out the
window.
Graf. "Employees are calling and messaging each other,
saying, 'I see you're fully charged, can you please move your car?'"
The problem is that installation of electric vehicle charging ports at
some companies has not kept pace with soaring demand, creating thorny
etiquette issues in the workplace. "Cars are getting unplugged while they are actively charging, and that's a problem,"
says Peter
German software company SAP installed
16 electric vehicle charging ports in 2010 at its Palo Alto campus for
the handful of employees who owned electric vehicles.
Now there are far
more electric cars than chargers.
Sixty-one of the roughly 1,800
employees on the campus now drive a plug-in vehicle, overwhelming the 16
available chargers.
And as demand for chargers exceeds supply, a host
of thorny etiquette issues have arisen, along with some rare but notorious incidents of "charge rage."
Companies are finding that they need one charging port for every two of
their employees' electric vehicles. "If you don't maintain a 2-to-1
ratio, you are dead," said ChargePoint CEO Pat Romano.
"Having two
chargers and 20 electric cars is worse than having no chargers and 20
electric cars.
If you are going to do this, you have to be willing to
continue to scale it."
No comments:
Post a Comment