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Sunday, October 11, 2015

Here in California the upper percentile are purchasing Tesla's and eschewing gas for electric. Only one big problem, too few charging stations. So people are getting meaner towards one another.

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."

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