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My office builder has a handful of chargers for employee use. They are always full. People with EVs come early, and leave their car connected for the entire day (even if it is not needed).

I suspect some kind of "recommended policy" might be coming at some point, as suggested in the article, since there will in no way be enough chargers for EV owners to leave their vehicles connected all day. Although I hope they also add more charging stations.



Do the chargers indicate when the car is not drawing current any more? Either with a light or something internet-enabled?

(Are we at webcam filter coffee time again?)


Leafs have blinky lights on the dash that quit blinking when the car is charged. I don't know about Tesla. Conceivably coworkers could know when is safe to unplug someone else's car and charge their own. Then again, we can't even get people to make a new pot of coffee when they drain the last of it, so who knows how considerate your fellow plug-in owners will be.


Model S has a fast pulsing green light around the charge port when it's charging.


Do any of the electric cars have a feature that the car will text you when it is charged? I imagine that might be nice to have, so that when your car is full you can go out to the parking lot and move it into a regular space.


The Leaf will send you a text/email when it is done charging. I've never used it, but it is a settable option in the Carwings mobile app.


The chargers and the car itself indicate whether it's charging or not. With the Chargepoint chargers mentioned in the article you can see if they are in-use or not online. But in-use just means plugged in, not drawing current.

As an individual you can see if your car is charging online, but you can't see if others in the same bank of chargers are charging. You also can't see if a car is blocking the parking space.

This is something where an webcam would help, but without a way to contact the owner of a car in a space it's hard to do something about it.


Most stations have indicators to say if they are charging, but it depends on the model/manufacturer.




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