Sorry to unplug your car

[mateo]

Something I find more annoying than having my car unplugged is when someone posts a large block of AI generated text on a forum as if they wrote it themselves.

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[Old_Norm]

If it happened while I was still charging, and I needed that charge to continue, I would have tried to come back to the car ASAP. Annoying, but not something to get freaked out over. If my car were done charging, I would have come back already and moved. Ideally, we should never need to unplug someone else's car, and if there's another option, that's what we should take instead. But sometimes, there isn't another option, and the risk of damage is comparable to parking next to another car in the parking lot.

Of course if Ford made the cars lock onto the charger's cable while charging, that would avoid situations like this.

On the Chevy Volt if you unplugged the charging cable while the car was locked an alarm sounded.

 

[Old_Norm]

Something I find more annoying than having my car unplugged is when someone posts a large block of AI generated text on a forum as if they wrote it themselves.

What I find annoying is someone who assumes that someone claims to have written something themselves when they didn't. BTW ass u me, I did write this sentence.

 

[Tampamike]

It was a desperate situation needed 14% to get home, I waited 30 mins for you to come back to your car. Left a note and gift for you

this was at 62kw level 3 charger at a dealership that offers free charging.

Edit: I did plug them back in.

Was it desperate just because you “needed to get home” or that you got tired of waiting and wanted to get home?

 

[L0WBATT3RY]

love this. Everyone here has their own opinion, I needed only 13% to get to my destination. Could Inhave planned better sure, but sometimes even the most laid out plans have hiccups. Was it annemerfency situation? No. Could of I’ve made it to another another paid charger? Maybe. Way I see it you parked your car at a dealership that offers free charging, nothing else was around this deal shop, restaurants, shops, or even a gas a station within walking distance. So this tells me one thing. You had someone pick you up. I waited thirty mins, with the car off..

everyone here saying you could scratch the car, etc etc. yeah how weak do you gotta be if you can’t handle the DC handle thingy

plus I’m pro V1 guy, so no loss on the golf balls

 

[Phil Martin]

in this part of the state, level 3 chargers are limited, except for Tesla. I don’t have my adapter yet (I did order a 3rd party that hasn’t arrived yet)

Op, it's fine. Doing a gift was weird though. You seem to have better charging etiquette than the vast majority of others, but next time don't write about it.

 

[Phil Martin]

love this. Everyone here has their own opinion, I needed only 13% to get to my destination. Could Inhave planned better sure, but sometimes even the most laid out plans have hiccups. Was it annemerfency situation? No. Could of I’ve made it to another another paid charger? Maybe. Way I see it you parked your car at a dealership that offers free charging, nothing else was around this deal shop, restaurants, shops, or even a gas a station within walking distance. So this tells me one thing. You had someone pick you up. I waited thirty mins, with the car off..

everyone here saying you could scratch the car, etc etc. yeah how weak do you gotta be if you can’t handle the DC handle thingy

plus I’m pro V1 guy, so no loss on the golf balls

You're on an Internet forum what do you expect. Most people don't practice what they preach in real life anyways, even less on some random internet forum.

 

[generaltso]

I'd have to be pretty desperate to unplug somebody else's car. But one thing I'm sure of is that if I ever did do that, I definitely wouldn't take a picture of it and post it on the Internet.

 

[ericNdfw]

On the Chevy Volt if you unplugged the charging cable while the car was locked an alarm sounded.

Yeah, I turned that off day-1.

 

[ericNdfw]

When I had PHEVs (2 Volts and a Fusion Energi), I had a magnet I threw on the side of my car near the charging port that showed others how to know if I was done charging and saying it was fine to unplug me if so. This removed all ambiguity. If I did more road-tripping and charging at hotels, I'd get the same for my MME.

FWIW, I also would move my car w/in minutes of getting a full SOC unless it was at an airport garage charger or something like that.

UPDATE: found the magnets (link above) and realized that I guess it didn't explicitly state it "was fine to unplug me" but U think the wording made it implicitly obvious that it was.

 

[Jimrpa]

Don’t do that. It’s not your car. Plan your trips better.

I would normally agree, but I would submit there are RARE circumstances where that might be necessary. In any event, if you do unplug someone, STAY WITH THE VEHICLE and “borrow” the plug for the absolute minimum necessary to get you to another charger. No more than 5-10 minutes. After that, just hang out in your car until someone returns and a charger frees up.
As a general rule, don’t do it. If you’re in a real emergency, remain with your car and only “borrow” for 5-10 mins.

 

[21st Century Pony]

If the other car is actively charging, them I would not unplug. In this case, unplugging would be an action that placed my priority over someone else's priority... akin to a form of selfishness or bullying in my book.

If the other car is not charging, then I would unplug and plug my own car in. In my book, that is a common sense use of a commonly available intentionally provided shared resource for transport. Perhaps the other driver was delayed by an unplanned yet important enough event to fail to return and unplug and move...

About "touching another car"... er, the touching & handling is primarily of the charging handle which is a publicly provided common resource and made to be handled by many hands. Kind of like a public drinking fountain in a park.

And yes if I unplugged another car because it was not charging, then as a common courtesy I would indeed touch it (gasp!) to close their charging port cover. Just like I would do so and have done so to open ICE car gas flaps I happen to pass in shopping parking lots etc. As large and wind-susceptible as our Mach E charging port covers are, IMHO closing such a spinnaker-size flap is civil common courtesy rather than leaving it flapping out there to be damaged.

In the end, these are just cars... not live babies and not precious exotic parrots. In five+ years few of them are likely to remain with current owners. We had no problems to speak of when teenagers all across America pumped gas for part-time after school money into our parents' cars.

 

[Bilyjck]

You aren’t required to stand by your car when charging. Whether free or paid. People tend to stay longer at free chargers though.

Unless they have gone over a posted time limit or it’s been sitting at 100% for a while, you simply should not be unplugging them. Even if they are full or over the time limit it’s best not to, but I could understand in that case.

If at 100% it should be OK to unplug. The owner should not leave car at near 100%.

 

[21st Century Pony]

It was a desperate situation needed 14% to get home, I waited 30 mins for you to come back to your car. Left a note and gift for you

this was at 62kw level 3 charger at a dealership that offers free charging.

Edit: I did plug them back in.

An entirely separate issue which may pertain here, and which I've occasionally encountered, is the possibility that an employee of that dealership had gotten used to "plug and stay" because they work there and it's become a habit. Largely unobserved and therefore unchallenged.

The two times this has happened to me, I went onto the dealership sales floor and asked whose car it is and quickly, the owner / employee came out and moved their car. Common sense communication = success.

 

[GreaseMonkey]

An entirely separate issue which may pertain here, and which I've occasionally encountered, is the possibility that an employee of that dealership had gotten used to "plug and stay" because they work there and it's become a habit. Largely unobserved and therefore unchallenged.

The two times this has happened to me, I went onto the dealership sales floor and asked whose car it is and quickly, the owner / employee came out and moved their car. Common sense communication = success.

One year ago today, I was returning from rural Indiana with the fam and a new puppy we picked up from a breeder. The headwind was so strong that a perfectly planned trip took a turn for the worse. We had to use a Kia dealership’s charger in Gary, IN. Once there, we found an ID.4 charging and parked next to it to wait our turn. Luckily, a friendly salesman came out and informed us that the store has another charger in the back! Saved us a 30 min wait. We charged enough to make it home, and gave the puppy a needed potty break.

Moral of the story: ask, investigate, don’t settle for the obvious. Sometimes you’d be pleasantly surprised.

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