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Something that has been bothering me for some time now is the concept of what a "public" charging station is. Ask yourself this question now... what do you understand if you are told that a charging station is a public charging station?
There is no standard or accepted definition and it seems to be causing a lot of confusion amongst electric car owners.
See here...
Is it really this hard?
I have had my Nissan Leaf now for over 2 years and at one point I was perhaps the most travelled Leaf owner in the UK having driven it from my home in Cornwall all over the UK... Newcastle, Scotland, Manchester... even Amsterdam! Well, I stopped doing long trips about a year ago and so I definitely no longer hold that accolade, if I ever did! I stopped using the Leaf for long trips. It is simply too difficult and time-consuming. However, I still look at planning a trip now and then in the hope it is getting easier. I think it is. There are more fast charging stations available now and many more slower ones for destination charging. However, finding out about what stations are available is still very hit and miss. There are now many web sites that have a database of stations with varying degrees of accuracy and completeness but as far as I know, there still is no reliable single source for EV owners to use to plan a trip safe in the knowledge that the data is accurate or indeed anything like complete.
Open Charge Map has that aim though. It's objective is to compile a complete catalogue of charging stations and to make it freely available to EV owners via its own web site and phone apps and to other web site creators to make the data as available as possible. I think that this is a laudable objective and I plan on helping with that effort myself soon. However, there is something that is still seriously confusing with regard to the data on any database be it Open Charge Map, Zap-Map or anywhere else... when is a charge station considered "public"?
For example... if a hotel installs a charging station for the use of its customers is that public? Sure, the public has the ability to use it because if they choose to buy the services of the hotel, such as a night stay or a meal in the restaurant, then they have access but what if they choose not to buy from that hotel? Often they cannot then use that station. To me that is not a "public" charging station. It is a private station for the use of the hotel customers only. A similar situation exists with toilets. Most restaurants and hotels have toilets available for their customers and most will not permit non-customer access. There are often signs saying "Toilets - customer use only". These "private" charging stations are the same.
Another example is a charging station that is accessed via a membership RFID card... POLAR, ChargeMaster, Source London etc all fall in this category. Are they "public"? I suggest that they are only available to members of the appropriate membership scheme. Sure, any member of the public can join but that is true of any private "club". It still makes the private club "private" to its members only - not "public".
Finally, what about the various charging stations at car dealers? You don't have to join any membership scheme to use those do you so surely they are public? Well I can only speak for the Nissan dealers because they are the only ones I have used but I know for certain that most dealers do not encourage use by non-Nissan cars. Some will allow it and others will now. Not exactly public!
So are there any "public" charging stations anywhere? I am sure there must be and you may know of some but there aren't anything like as many as the databases and web sites suggest.
So am I complaining at that? Not really. I think that things will progress and develop according to market drivers (pardon the pun!) and so I am not really commenting at all on the charging stations themselves or the organisations that are deploying them. I think I am just concerned at how public access, or lack of it, is being recorded and reported. Most charging stations at the moment are recorded on the various databases and web sites as "public" or "public access". Some have caveats that membership is required but in reality they are not "public" at all as there is almost always a significant element of membership requiring pre-registration and sometimes payment or a requirement to buy a service or product to gain access. Like I say, I have no issue with those pre-requisites per-se but we should not then be recording those stations as "public" should we? They are really "private".
I believe that by any sensible assessment of most charging stations that exist today a better description would be "private". To call them "public" is quite misleading especially to new EV owners who often cannot clearly determine what they must buy or what scheme they must join to be able to charge.
Eventually this will have to be sorted out but right now EV drivers that see a charging station listed as "public" should always check out what they must do or what they must buy to gain access... there is bound to be something and it often needs to be applied for days or even weeks ahead of when you want to charge.
There is no standard or accepted definition and it seems to be causing a lot of confusion amongst electric car owners.
See here...
Is it really this hard?
I have had my Nissan Leaf now for over 2 years and at one point I was perhaps the most travelled Leaf owner in the UK having driven it from my home in Cornwall all over the UK... Newcastle, Scotland, Manchester... even Amsterdam! Well, I stopped doing long trips about a year ago and so I definitely no longer hold that accolade, if I ever did! I stopped using the Leaf for long trips. It is simply too difficult and time-consuming. However, I still look at planning a trip now and then in the hope it is getting easier. I think it is. There are more fast charging stations available now and many more slower ones for destination charging. However, finding out about what stations are available is still very hit and miss. There are now many web sites that have a database of stations with varying degrees of accuracy and completeness but as far as I know, there still is no reliable single source for EV owners to use to plan a trip safe in the knowledge that the data is accurate or indeed anything like complete.
Open Charge Map has that aim though. It's objective is to compile a complete catalogue of charging stations and to make it freely available to EV owners via its own web site and phone apps and to other web site creators to make the data as available as possible. I think that this is a laudable objective and I plan on helping with that effort myself soon. However, there is something that is still seriously confusing with regard to the data on any database be it Open Charge Map, Zap-Map or anywhere else... when is a charge station considered "public"?
For example... if a hotel installs a charging station for the use of its customers is that public? Sure, the public has the ability to use it because if they choose to buy the services of the hotel, such as a night stay or a meal in the restaurant, then they have access but what if they choose not to buy from that hotel? Often they cannot then use that station. To me that is not a "public" charging station. It is a private station for the use of the hotel customers only. A similar situation exists with toilets. Most restaurants and hotels have toilets available for their customers and most will not permit non-customer access. There are often signs saying "Toilets - customer use only". These "private" charging stations are the same.
Another example is a charging station that is accessed via a membership RFID card... POLAR, ChargeMaster, Source London etc all fall in this category. Are they "public"? I suggest that they are only available to members of the appropriate membership scheme. Sure, any member of the public can join but that is true of any private "club". It still makes the private club "private" to its members only - not "public".
Finally, what about the various charging stations at car dealers? You don't have to join any membership scheme to use those do you so surely they are public? Well I can only speak for the Nissan dealers because they are the only ones I have used but I know for certain that most dealers do not encourage use by non-Nissan cars. Some will allow it and others will now. Not exactly public!
So are there any "public" charging stations anywhere? I am sure there must be and you may know of some but there aren't anything like as many as the databases and web sites suggest.
So am I complaining at that? Not really. I think that things will progress and develop according to market drivers (pardon the pun!) and so I am not really commenting at all on the charging stations themselves or the organisations that are deploying them. I think I am just concerned at how public access, or lack of it, is being recorded and reported. Most charging stations at the moment are recorded on the various databases and web sites as "public" or "public access". Some have caveats that membership is required but in reality they are not "public" at all as there is almost always a significant element of membership requiring pre-registration and sometimes payment or a requirement to buy a service or product to gain access. Like I say, I have no issue with those pre-requisites per-se but we should not then be recording those stations as "public" should we? They are really "private".
I believe that by any sensible assessment of most charging stations that exist today a better description would be "private". To call them "public" is quite misleading especially to new EV owners who often cannot clearly determine what they must buy or what scheme they must join to be able to charge.
Eventually this will have to be sorted out but right now EV drivers that see a charging station listed as "public" should always check out what they must do or what they must buy to gain access... there is bound to be something and it often needs to be applied for days or even weeks ahead of when you want to charge.
