Free Public Level 2 Charging Etiquette

[ahava3233]

Ummm DCFC is L3 ...

The owners manual specifically says it's just for L3. What forum members said when the car was 3 months off the line is not relevant.

But what do I know ... keep pushing the button if it makes you happy.

All I otherwise know is that the chargers I have at my apartment complex are definitely not CCS1/DCFC, it's Level 2/J1772 and charges at like 5-6 kWh. No bottom two prongs. Teslas in my building also used it long before the CCS adapters came out for Tesla last year. It does not look like a Electrify America plug. tl;dr; I am not crazy, I hope.

I also did squeeze the release on top of the plug when I pulled the plug.

Undocumented "features" are a thing in the tech world too right?

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[Kamuelaflyer]

All I otherwise know is that the chargers I have at my apartment complex are definitely not CCS1/DCFC, it's Level 2/J1772 and charges at like 5-6 kWh. No bottom two prongs. Teslas in my building also used it long before the CCS adapters came out for Tesla last year. It does not look like a Electrify America plug. tl;dr; I am not crazy, I hope.

I also did squeeze the release on top of the plug when I pulled the plug.

Undocumented "features" are a thing in the tech world too right?

Give it a rest. The disconnect button is meaningless for L2 charging in all North America without exception. The only other option is you have the only car in existence that behaves differently. Which is more likely?

 

[mkhuffman]

All I otherwise know is that the chargers I have at my apartment complex are definitely not CCS1/DCFC, it's Level 2/J1772 and charges at like 5-6 kWh. No bottom two prongs. Teslas in my building also used it long before the CCS adapters came out for Tesla last year. It does not look like a Electrify America plug. tl;dr; I am not crazy, I hope.

I also did squeeze the release on top of the plug when I pulled the plug.

Undocumented "features" are a thing in the tech world too right?

Like the others, I am also in disbelief about this. Maybe you could post a video showing what you are doing?

I personally own Grizzl-e and Emporia chargers, as well as the included Ford travel POS, and have used multiple public L2s. Never have I needed to press the button on the car to release the handle. Never.

 

[nvabill]

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, another thread and now 5 pages telling us there are not enough chargers, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah!

 

[Logal727]

I just attempted the cable yank with no button press on an L2 charger.

It worked with two caveats.

1. I felt some resistance for a moment when I pulled the cable, then it came out. I don't recall this happening when I hit the button normally.

2. The L2 charger went into fault mode when I finished pulling...this means that it could have been the charging going into fault/stopping because I pulled on the cable, that unlocked the cable.

It seems to me like the port is at least physically capable of locking in J1772 cords as opposed to only CCS1. If so, I want an OTA .

You always need to press the button on the charge handle to release it, that’s not the same as locking. The circular button on the car is not used for L2.

 

[MachLovin]

The audacity of the Tesla guy to use the free L2 instead of the SC is what really gets me. What an a-hole

Agreed.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

If you don't *need* the free charger, then don't use it. Do you need more than 70% to get to your next charger?

IMO, this is like middle-class and rich people showing up to the food bank to get a free box of food or someone who doesn't need it parking in a parking spot reserved for people with disabilities. If you do that, YTA.

If you unplug someone's car, you're also TA.

When those two things intersect, everyone is TA.

When I stopped at a hotel with free L2 charging, I set an alarm on my phone to go out and unplug when the car reached my required charge level. This was predicted to happen at around 2:00 AM. I got up, checked the charge level; it was close enough so I went out and moved the car, and went back to sleep. If I can do that, you can leave your office in the middle of the day for a few minutes to move your car when it's reached your required SOC.

 

[ARK]

This was exactly the case in the town I used to live in. 2 free level 2 chargers and 1 slow level 3 charger. There was a father and daughter with PHEVs and they worked in a building attached to the public parking lot owned by the town. They would get to work Monday through Friday and plug in to them first thing in the morning and be plugged in all day. When they were finished charging they would unplug but would rarely move their cars. When the father got a BEV, he would do the same thing he did before but with the level 3, every day. And mind you this is the only level 3 in the area period. Like within 50 miles. And people use it to travel through the area and now were complaining on plugshare and chargepoint that the level 3 was always taken. They used them as their personal chargers every single day they worked and was so frustrating to the other PHEVs and the handful of BEVs including myself on the rare occasion we relied on the level 3. There needs to be hard rules by the towns that are enforced for free chargers, or the charger owner needs to set strick monetary penalties after a certain time/battery SOC.

Yeah, same thing at my work and I suspect many other places.

If Jill comes in at 8:00 a.m. every day and routinely plugs in, and Jason and Brad come in around 9:00 a.m. and each try to take it if Jill is off that day or coming into work late, then customers Susan, Sean, Bill, James, Adam, Alex, Alexis, Charlie, Tom, Walter, Victoria, etc. who sometimes come at 10:15 a.m., sometimes at 12:30 p.m., sometimes at 3:00 p.m., etc., will never get it - it will be Jill, Jason, and Brad 95%+ of the time.

 

[ShaggySS]

Yeah, same thing at my work and I suspect many other places.

If Jill comes in at 8:00 a.m. every day and routinely plugs in, and Jason and Brad come in around 9:00 a.m. and each try to take it if Jill is off that day or coming into work late, then customers Susan, Sean, Bill, James, Adam, Alex, Alexis, Charlie, Tom, Walter, Victoria, etc. who sometimes come at 10:15 a.m., sometimes at 12:30 p.m., sometimes at 3:00 p.m., etc., will never get it - it will be Jill, Jason, and Brad 95%+ of the time.

Funny, that's how it is at one office at work. We have 4 chargers and about 8 EV\PHEV's and people plugin and charge but leave the car there all day. Whereas at another site we have 2 chargers and people are much more considerate. They all communicate when they are done, or if anyone really needed it others move.

 

[RickMachE]

If a business has customers, and they let employees use chargers that are intended for customers, it's a pretty poorly run business.

 

[ShaggySS]

If a business has customers, and they let employees use chargers that are intended for customers, it's a pretty poorly run business.

These are private chargers for the employees to use at these two locations.

 

[ARK]

If a business has customers, and they let employees use chargers that are intended for customers, it's a pretty poorly run business.

In theory yes, in practice, it is harder to do if it is not a private parking lot belonging to a single business. In office complexes where building management runs the lot and there are hundreds of employees on site across a few dozen businesses, some with customers at location others without, it is much harder to control (short of adding in a cost for charging).

 

[RickMachE]

In theory yes, in practice, it is harder to do if it is not a private parking lot belonging to a single business. In office complexes where building management runs the lot and there are hundreds of employees on site across a few dozen businesses, some with customers at location others without, it is much harder to control (short of adding in a cost for charging).

An easy way to control it (assuming all the businesses there agree) is to issue a policy to all employees of each company that they may NOT use the customer chargers. Then enforce it.

A relative of ours was the CFO for a county nearby. An employee of the county was parking in the school across the street's parking lot and charging all day. Signage said very clearly that it was for school employees only. When brought to the attention of the county, the employee was dismissed.

 

[ARK]

An easy way to control it (assuming all the businesses there agree) is to issue a policy to all employees of each company that they may NOT use the customer chargers. Then enforce it.

A relative of ours was the CFO for a county nearby. An employee of the county was parking in the school across the street's parking lot and charging all day. Signage said very clearly that it was for school employees only. When brought to the attention of the county, the employee was dismissed.

That's the crux of it unfortunately, even if you get 90% of businesses to sign on, if there are several people who work in the building who have an EV and are indifferent, they can still ruin it for everyone.

We've had a similar problem for years with the customer parking. Employees park, building management tries to complain, write them up, employees stop, employees do it again when driving their spouse's car, and on it goes.

Seems a lot worse since after Covid in terms of people becoming much less courteous to each other with these sorts of things, at least in my neck of the woods.

 

[bcaceres]

This is simple.... if you arrive at a Level-2 charger and somebody is already using it, you leave them plugged in. The only scenarios in which you could justify touching their vehicle and unplugging them are:

1) You can tell the vehicle is fully charged by some visible indicator

2) You know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the vehicle has exceeded a posted time limit (which is hard to know because some people drive away to get lunch and come back and plug-in again) -- usually best to report exceeding of time limits to property manager, but often that is not an option.

3) Unplugging the vehicle might prevent a fire because there are visible signs of a problem (sparks, smoke, etc...) -- best to call the fire department.

Level-2 chargers are meant to be long-term (not quick top-offs). You are going to be there for hours when you plug in -- you should not feel bad about that. Either you are working in the office building that provides the charger, you are shopping at the store(s) that provide it, you are seeing a movie, show or sporting event at the venue that provides or whatever. If they are city-provided chargers then likely they are just placed on city property and you don't even have to be a patron for the provider (i.e.: paying sales tax gives you the right to use it).

My Nissan Leaf has a mechanism to lock the level-2 charger so it cannot be pulled out by somebody else. I don't know if all Level-2 chargers support the locking, but so far it has seemed to work. I leave that option turned off at home for obvious reasons, but when using a public charger, I have turned it on because people can be jerks. I don't know if the Mach-E has the same option for locking the charger in the port since I have not gotten mine yet.

Here is a good piece of Level-2 etiquette to keep in mind. If there are multiple chargers and each has 2 charging plugs, try to use one that is not already in use. When you use the second charging plug on a charger, not only are you only getting half the power, but so is the person you're parked next to. I have had the ChargePoint app tell me that I dropped from 6.6kw to 3.3kw because the second plug was in use, but when I looked at the vehicle I could see there was a second ChargePoint charger that was completely unused one parking spot over -- we both could have gotten 6.6kw but instead we were both getting 3.3kw.

Also, once Ford gets complimentary fast chargers at dealerships it will be a big help for Mach-E owners. My Nissan dealer recently installed combo CSS/Cha-DEMO chargers and with my short-range 140-mile Nissan Leaf there have been times that I have needed a top-off in the middle of the day when driving a lot. Last time I had my Nissan Leaf serviced there, they told me that those chargers are complimentary to use for their customers so long as they are available. Recently, the dealer uses them more now that they have the Nissan Ariya doing test drives, but I have always found at least one of their two chargers was available.

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