While it's not 911 levels of illegal, where I am parking in a charge-only spot and not charging is a tow and a fine and a strike on your record, 3 strikes is a license suspension.
Now if only I could get the local police to actually enforce this piss easy rule...
The charge ports on non-Teslas, meanwhile, are also in a different spot on the vehicle, meaning they may have to park parallel to a Supercharger, taking up two spots. That's what happened here; "I had no choice but to park in a way that blocks two stalls," according to the Rivian driver.
Sounds like this guy sucks too unless there were a bunch of spots open or extenuating circumstances.
Others responded that they thought this type of conflict might happen and that it's "unwise" for Tesla to open chargers to other brands while keeping the "Tesla Charging Only" signs up.
Sounds like this guy sucks too unless there were a bunch of spots open or extenuating circumstances.
I don't think people driving other brands deliberately want to mess with Tesla's super short charging cables. It was Tesla who applied to have their plug standardized, so that they don't have to change their American cars to CCS, now it's IMO also up to Tesla to fit longer cables to their chargers.
Tesla’s a dick for opening charging up to other brands without making the cord long enough, but without extenuating circumstances it’s a dick move to take up two spaces to charge (I don’t consider “I don’t want to drive 10 minutes down the road” an extenuating circumstance). It’s not something I would do and it’s not something I would expect the lot owner to just put up with if it was them telling me to move it.
Again, I want to emphasize the Tesla guy calling 911 is unhinged. That doesn’t mean other parties can’t also be behaving in a sub-ideal way.
Tesla was forced to make their NACS charger an actual standard for the US due to some regulations and rules. Anyways, the gen 4 or 5 charger they have coming has a cable extension for this exact reason. Musk and others noted when they opened up to other manufacturers that it would be difficult to use them due to location of chargers. The Rivian owner isn’t a jerk, just someone who was trying to fast charge and the charger wasn’t built for their vehicle.
As for the signage, 100% they should have taken them down 12/31/23 as that’s the last day they stopped being Tesla specific. All late last year and up until March of this year one after another companies have been falling inline to unify around 1 standard. Thank god (engineers and standards organizations).
I totally get that it may not be physically possible to fit the car in one spot due to the charger positioning and cord length, but if that happened to me and the lot wasn’t virtually empty I would absolutely look for somewhere else to charge. Tesla guy is still the biggest dickhead here, I’m just saying I’d have some shame about taking up two spots if I had any other choice, which includes just leaving and charging somewhere else.
But I did rent a Mustang Mach-E for 12 days as I tooled around between Houston, Dallas, and Austin.
At one point I had found a Tesla supercharger and thought it would work (it wouldn't, because it wasn't one of the upgraded ones and didn't support CCS).
The cords on those things are ridiculously short. IIRC the Tesla's have their charge port all in the rear-right corner and when they aren't pull-through, they require Tesla owners to back in very close to the charger.
Most other cars cannot reach the charger (even if it is CCS compatible) due to the placement of their charge ports. Some, like this Rivian, require the driver to park like an ass to use it.
And sometimes you may not have a good option. When I was driving from my hotel (near Galleria) back to IAH, I tried to find a fast charger on the way.
The first one I found (EVConmect I think) was at a Walmart. The one charger that was opened was out-of-order (and according to a local, it had been that way for a while. All the others were occupied and a few were even sitting in their cars at mid-90% and a line forming behind them (which, I don't know much about charger etiquette, but I think that's a faux pas. Charging slows down dramatically after 80 and as I understand it's generally a bad idea to regularly charge past 80 anyway).
The next closest one took me 18 minutes out of my way to a Shell station. My hotel was only 35 minutes or so from the airport.
Oh, and on the way between the cities, there were times when I was at least 75 miles from the nearest charger. Buc-ees almost always had a ton of chargers, but almost all of them Superchargers.
Wait? What? Where exactly is the charging port on the rivian? Is it inside a door or something? The ports are usually at the front or the back and you should do yourself a favor and park so that the port is closest to the charger.
My Ioniq5s port is on the passenger rear of the car, if I attempted to pull in front first I wouldn't be able to reach the port on most chargers. This isn't a tesla problem, this is an idiot problem.
The above said, we could use a move to gas pump style chargers, space them apart enough and let people pull in based on which side of the car the port is, that way it's easier on everyone and it allows for the odd ev pulling a trailer to charge without either taking the time to disconnect the trailer or having to parallel park like this idiot apparently did and block multiple spots.
Edit:just looked it up and yep, rivian has them in the normal spots. Some are upfront and others are in the back. Dude in this story should have backed his ass in if it was in the back. I have to do this with the DC chargers. Plus, backing in to a parking spot (when you can) is the way to go, it makes life easier and safer when you need to leave.
I thought it was frictional? But I guess 80% of the Witcher is based on existing mythology or places, there are several Novigrads (meaning 'New City') in Croatia for example.
rivian is a up and coming startup, whose largest push was when they got the contract from amazon to design their EV delivery trucks. so within the next couple of years their portfolio and options will increase, and become cheaper.
They have a truck and SUV. The truck is kinda neat because it has a compartment at the front of the bed that can mount pullout accessories like a kitchenette for use while camping.
They're actually a bit cheaper at around $80k-$90k which is a lot of money no doubt, but not out of line for other trucks that also won't be used for 'real truck stuff' like 90% of truck owners.
Yup, that sounds like the behavior of a Tesla owner. For anyone who didn't read the article, Tesla granted charger access to Rivian, so the guy wasn't breaking the law, other than parking across two spots, and if he was planning on waiting while it charged then that's no issue since he can move if someone shows up .
Considering that the charging cables are liquid cooled (from what I've read at least), would there be a hose or something to connect the cooling liquid?