EV and charging etiquette
The enormous explosion of interest in EVs and everything that's associated with them has created a need for organisation and understanding. We see this not only at the political level, but also at the social level. This requires every EV driver to do his or her bit to ensure good EV etiquette.
What can I do?
Fully charged? Give someone else a chance to recharge.
To give as many people as possible the chance to charge their car, we recommend you to move your car when it is fully charged. You never know how urgently someone else needs to charge. It wouldn't come across as socially considerate behaviour if you left your car fully charged at a charging station all day, while someone else with an empty battery is desperately looking for a charging station nearby.
You should also bear in mind that charging is much slower from 80% of battery charge upwards. Charging above 80% is not good for the health of your battery either. Find out what you can do to preserve the life of your battery.
Parking spaces with a charging station only serve to charge!
As mentioned above, it is not considerate when a parking space with a charge point is occupied by someone who is not using the charge point. Avoid parking in such places if you do not need the charging station. This way you allow everyone the chance to charge their EV when needed. It's basically the same as if someone with a fuel car would park at an EV charging station, which is also strongly frowned upon. So don't park your car at a charging station if you still have enough battery.
Don't pull the plug on other EVs.
This too is highly frowned upon and is the least courteous to say the least. One doesn't know how much battery percentage another car has left, so you shouldn't pull the charging cable from another EV just like that. For instance, you wouldn't want someone else to pull out your charging cable before the car is charged, just before that important appointment for which you have to drive a distance!
Fortunately, in most cases this is no longer possible due to the locking mechanisms of Type 2 charge cables. This is sometimes still possible with Type 1 charge cables.
The only time when this is acceptable is when the driver has left a message stating that you may pull out the cable. You can also indicate this with our Pluginvest EV Parking Disc which shows you when your EV is fully charged.
Take care of the charging devices and leave the station in a way that the next person can charge immediately.
It is always nice to arrive at a charging station ready to use without having to pick up cables from the ground or clean the plug head. That is why it only requires minimal effort to roll up the charging cables after you have finished charging, to hang them up nicely on the charging device and finish the charging session correctly by holding the badge to the RFID reader.
Cables left lying on the ground may be damaged in this way.
Never press the emergency stop button unless there is a real emergency!
Oftentimes, the charging station will go offline when you activate the emergency stop which will render the charging station unusable for a while. Very annoying for the next EV driver that needs to charge their EV.
Rule of thumb: Communicate with your fellow EV drivers!
In order to better inform your fellow EV-driver and to understand each other better, it is always advisable to open up yourself to communicatively towards other EV-drivers. A simple post-it with a message to the other drivers or an EV parking disc like the one offered by Pluginvest can all contribute to a better understanding and agreement between EV drivers.