[Badger]

Many businesses seem to have chargers. What's the score on using them? For instance:

Extract Coffee Roasters PlugShare - Find Electric Vehicle Charging Locations Near You

Can you just rock-up, plug in and wait?


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[niggle]

I think most intend them to be used by customers, and many will have parking restrictions for the car park that would include being a customer and a time restriction that apply to all vehicles including those using chargers.

My local Tesco has pod points, they don't monitor whether you are a customer but there is a two hour parking restriction. It is only a five minute walk from home but still it is a bit of a faff to get 14 kWh of juice, i.e what would cost about £2.50 on the home charger.

 

[Carty]

We stopped off for some lunch at a Marstons pub last week, as we where leaving the manager ( who had a BMW i3 ) on its way, spotted my car in the corner of the car park.
We had a quick chat and he pointed out a fast post ( hidden by an ICE car ) in a corner of the car park.
It was a BP charge master 7kw fast post.
He said to access it, I would need a RFID card that was kept behind the bar for EV customers.
He said I could use the charger on our next visit ( we where just leaving ) and to ask for the access card.
He said he intended to make good use of the post when his car arrived.
I was curious to see if my Polar Plus RFID card would access this unit, which it should !.
But when I offered it the card, it reported “Card Invalid”.
Therefore, I can only assume they have made the post only accessible for the one single card to stop non customers hogging the post ?.
Basically not open access to this unit then !.

 

[John Kelly]

I think most intend them to be used by customers, and many will have parking restrictions for the car park that would include being a customer and a time restriction that apply to all vehicles including those using chargers.

My local Tesco has pod points, they don't monitor whether you are a customer but there is a two hour parking restriction. It is only a five minute walk from home but still it is a bit of a faff to get 14 kWh of juice, i.e what would cost about £2.50 on the home charger.

On octopus go off peak it's only 70p for that much. Hardly seems worth the effort unless you're away from home.

I was in Stroud Tesco the other week and the pod point charger there was available so I went to use it. I asked at customer services what the time limit was on the car park and they said there wasn't one. Left it there for a few hours whilst walking around town

 

[starquake]

But when I offered it the card, it reported “Card Invalid”.
Therefore, I can only assume they have made the post only accessible for the one single card to stop non customers hogging the post ?.
Basically not open access to this unit then !.

Private polar posts are actually reasonably common these days (work has ~ 30 of them probably 100 by end of year), none of which are on the main polar website. We sign up for Polar @ work, email our card if to the site manager and they enable our card id's and polar handle the billing for work. (we get charged a reasonable 2p a Kwh). I doubt we are only company with the arrangement.

I do feel sorry for "visitors" to our sites though -> as we have no "public" charging available at all.