I’m a new EV owner and have a charging etiquette question for a long trip we are going to take next summer. We live in rural WV and luckily the small regional airport here has 12 charging stations in the one parking garage on site. They are free to use while parking in the garage. I’d like to park and charge here while we are away on our trip but I’m not sure if this is polite. Plugshare says they are pretty slow stations and better for charging while you are away traveling. Just as extra info, there is no valet here that could move my vehicle after it is charged so it will be there until I get back from our trip. And yes I do need to charge to make it the next destination after our flight lands. What are your thoughts? I don’t see an option other than leaving the vehicle here while away flying but is it polite to do so?
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Charge away. If you’re feeling guilty, leave a note that say they can charge when full, after x date, etc.
Do you need to charge it? I’ve driven an hour to an airport, arrived with 60% soc, parked in normal parking then when my trip was done drove the EV home
Many states have EV parking laws that are 3 hours max to keep people from camping on chargers.
Charge away! We did this last year when going to Mexico for a week. Left my car plugged in at the airport. I paid extra so didn’t feel guilty.
Ask the airport! But these are very likely intended for charging during a trip. I’ve used a similar setup at Atlanta airport long term parking. A row of 20 or so of slow ‘L2’ chargers. They are about 2kW and intended for you to be plugged in while away.
For those wondering why airports have L2 when L1 would do. It makes more electrical sense to have low power 208V L2 charging. 2kW is fine if you are going to be plugged in for days.
IMO, airports should be installing a crap ton of L1 chargers for this purpose. Taking a couple days to get a full charge is perfectly acceptable if one is away on a trip, and it would lower the install and operating costs allowing the airport to install more of them.
L2 is more cost effective. Charging losses at L1 speeds are significantly more than L2 speeds. For 1 datapoint for 1 car, Ioniq Guy measured 31% loss for L1 vs 9% for L2 on a warm day.
You are absolutely correct, this is a perfect use case for 100 or so good quality L1 chargers
This. Atl airport has 100 or so spread across a few garages. Most are L1 which is good enough when I’m gone for a couple of days
My hope would be that the chargers are spaced out with long cords to allow people to unplug fully charged cars to plug in other spaces.
My understanding is that it’s one plug per spot and not spaced so that two spots could utilize one plug. That would have been a good solution for maximizing use of one station though.