13 ms·

Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

61 points by Biba89 6y ago

ultimoo 6y ago
Not sure what's so surprising/interesting about this (I don't have a subscription to read the full article). This nugget in the introduction seems to summarize the tech behind this -- > Sensors installed in electric bays can be used to detect the presence of a vehicle and whether it is being used to recharge the car battery.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  So it will fine an electric car that parks in the bay if it isn't charging? These are not really parking spots anymore. They are "charging bays". That's cool. Just remember not to park your electric car there with a full battery. I guess if your battery is full, by the time you drive around a while looking for another spot it will be low enough that you will be allowed to use the bay. The few times I've tried to charge an EV at a public non-tesla charging point, it has been a real hassle. The multitude of protocols mean that sometimes it just doesn't work. I'd be very not happy if that meant I would then have to find another spot. Perhaps there is a market for a defeat device, a plug that simulates an electric car, like those HDMI/VGA simulators used to trick motherboards into thinking they are attached to a screen. It probably wouldn't need much of a resistor to simulate minimal charging rates.
  - paledot 6y ago
    They're not parking spots. Don't park next to a gas pump if you're not putting gas in the car, even if it has an internal combustion engine.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      I did exactly that this morning. I put gas in my car, paid at the pump, then walked in to buy a drink. I certainly wouldn't do that if people were waiting for the pump, but the option is there and used by drivers regularly.
      - ehvatum 6y ago
        Quiet, the UK will start fining for this too if they think of it.
        robertlagrant 6y ago
        And we should. This is obvious bad behaviour.
        macintux 6y ago
        Depends on the context. Why waste the fuel to start and move a vehicle if there’s not enough traffic to demand a free pump?
      - Rygian 6y ago
        Not sure if your implication is that you could do the same thing on any other spot (e.g. a spot for disabled, a load/unload spot, a spot reserved for police cars), as long as "people are not waiting for it". In any case, the rule I follow is to move the car where it doesn't block a scarce resource.
      - orev 6y ago
        But you were a customer of the gas pump during that visit/session, so that example doesn’t apply. It would only apply if you used the pump area for parking, when other non-pump spaces were available, and you did not purchase fuel.
        im3w1l 6y ago
        When he went in to buy a drink there was no need for his car to be buy the pump anymore. He had filled up and paid already. He remained only because it was more convinient than moving the car and then getting the drink. Depending on how many people were waiting and how long it took to get the drink, that was probably the right call.
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        When I Supercharge, I get a push notification that idle fees start ($1/minute) 5 minutes after the charge completes. Econ 101: Incentives matter
    - SteveGerencser 6y ago
      People treat gas pumps as parking spots all the time. It's even more frustrating when you are driving a diesel and the only diesel pump at the station is blocked by a gas car and the owner has wandered off to get a coffee or use the restroom, all while multiple gas pumps sit empty.
      - olivermarks 6y ago
        Most petrol/gasoline stations make the majority of their money selling other products, particularly in non urban locations. Milk, newspapers, magazines etc. This business model makes refuelling stations a viable business since the margins on fuel costs are so slim. One of the challenges with the crude political attempts to force EV usage (carrot/subsidies, Stick/fines) is the lack of coherent planning behind it. What happens when/if there are huge numbers of EV's? It's a similar issue with public transport. My sister, a keen cyclist in London, now has two knee replacements and can't really cycle anymore. Public transport is a huge challenge (stairs etc) and driving in London is made ever harder with more and more bicycle lanes, concrete blocks dumped on roads and massive charges for attempting to use her car. None of this is thought through. I'd really like to see some sort of vision democratically presented for comment by citizens before these autocratic decrees and changes are introduced, we seem to have more and more ill considered plans that are not joined up imposed on us, making life harder and harder...
        bobthepanda 6y ago
        Don’t EVs take longer to charge than a gas fill-up? Presumably that would be better for a model where you want people to stick around and buy things, not worse. At least in the Netherlands, there are basically mini golf carts that are legally bikes for disabled people. https://youtu.be/B9ly7JjqEb0 https://youtu.be/B9ly7JjqEb0
        owenmarshall 6y ago
        > Presumably that would be better for a model where you want people to stick around and buy things, not worse. Gas stations occupy an interesting place in American life: some stations - often those in urban areas - are designed for “get in, grab a pack of peanuts, get out” transactions, but others in rural areas serve as a local gathering area. Pre-Covid (and, let’s be honest, even post-Covid) the gas stations near me are full of people sitting at tables eating hot food and passing time. What is amusing is that the same gas stations that encourage to have people sit and stay a while tend to be located in areas where EVs are extremely uncommon.
    - edgarvaldes 6y ago
      Is this an American thing? To park in a gas pump for minutes after you used it?
      - paledot 6y ago
        Yup. Bear in mind that the gas stations in the US tend towards the mind-bogglingly huge. 12 pumps across the street from 16 pumps is a common sight. (Speaking as a Canadian who used to cross the border a lot when business travel was a thing.)
  - labawi 6y ago
    > It probably wouldn't need much of a resistor to simulate minimal charging rates. Resistor wouldn't be a huge problem. A heat sink might be - the chargers typically support 5-50kW¹ charging rates. I'm not sure they would consider 100W or so "charging", so you might end up with something bulky. ¹ a guesstimate
    - nikau 6y ago
      Easy, just need to find a resistor bank like they use on metro trains for braking and bolt it on the roof.
  - mft_ 6y ago
    Maybe I’ve been lucky, but here in the EU, I’ve not yet found a non-Tesla charger that won’t charge my Tesla. And also, the mobility+ app (no affiliation) has dealt fine with multiple brands of charger.
    - gambiting 6y ago
      You were definitely lucky. I've driven through Germany last summer and I couldn't find a single charger that worked, every single one required an app, one wouldn't accept my non-german card, second one didn't have a menu in English so I didn't know how to set it up, third one gave me an "unspecified error" and told me to ring their helpline, but upon calling them discovered they are closed on Sunday. So in the end I didn't charge in Germany at all.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        Germany seems to run an entirely independent and parallel cards and payments system to the rest of the world. Really frustrating.
        sofixa 6y ago
        Really? I've had no problems with regular Visa and MasterCard debit cards, while at the same time the in the Netherlands non-Maestros are barely accepted outside of ATMs, even in huge stores ( that's gotten better in the last 2-3 years).
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        Last time I was at a German train station I didn't recognise any of the accepted payment cards as a visitor from elsewhere in Europe. And I note you mention you were specifically ok using debit cards - credit cards are even more problematic than debit cards in Germany. They really don't like accepting them. And try to use an American Express for anything and you will just get a puzzled look!
        6y ago
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > Perhaps there is a market for a defeat device, a plug that simulates an electric car, like those HDMI/VGA simulators used to trick motherboards into thinking they are attached to a screen. It probably wouldn't need much of a resistor to simulate minimal charging rates. EV parking isn't that premium or common where this would be valuable. Also, this kind of anti-social behavior is a good way to get your car keyed when someone rolls up and needs 10 miles of power to get home and sees a jerk in a non EV in the only charging spot.
- hannob 6y ago
  It's surprising because car drivers are used to the fact that rules are not or rarely enforced. Just think about it: Technically it would be no big problem to enforce speed limits widely. The technology for speeding cameras isn't exceptionally complex, you could mass-produce them and deploy them basically in every street. I'm not aware of any country doing that.
  - hansvm 6y ago
    We'd probably need a few other societal changes to make automatic enforcement of the posted speed limit manageable. As an example, if you're on a 50mph road in the USA and assume that your speedometer is calibrated within legal tolerances (and no further) then you'd have to set your cruise control to at most 43mph to ensure that you'd never speed (5mph speedometer error at that speed plus 2mph in speed variability from bumps/hills/etc), you could actually be averaging as low as 39mph in practice, and somebody else behind you with a speedometer off the other direction could think you're going as slowly as 35mph (on average, slower from time to time). I can say from experience that doing so is an easy way to be flipped off, sworn at, passed on the shoulder or a sidewalk, and have police called to your location (occasionally driving the speed limit plus 0-10mph results in similar levels of aggression), even though you can potentially be ticketed for going even a mile per hour faster (most police forces allow a lot more slop in your speed for precisely that kind of reason, but there are definitely a few who don't give a shit because they know you don't want to drive all the way back to the middle of nowhere to fight it) and even though driving that slowly is totally legal in most places. None of that is insurmountable of course, and the easiest fix seems like just having the automated system only ticket you at some threshold above the limit while grandfathering in tighter speedometer tolerances. Aggression from driving the speed limit would probably decrease rapidly as tickets started arriving in the mail.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Technically it would be no big problem to enforce speed limits widely More than you suggest. > The technology for speeding cameras isn't exceptionally complex But speed cameras are just one piece of enforcement. With those and automatic license plate reading you get a piece of evidence that a car violated the limit at a particular time and place, but even if the law is that a set limit is a hard limit (which is not the case in much of the US, where posted limits are often prima facie but not dispositive limits), that's not all you need for enforcement. You also need legal process to weigh potential counterevidence, to deal with contested identity of actual drivers, etc. This isn't technically complex, but it adds a lot of overhead, which is why even places which legally allow this mechanism deploy it selectively, not comprehensively.
kwhitefoot 6y ago
Would be better to spend the money that this will cost on fitting a simple domestic socket in every parking bay. That we even my Tesla will gain 13 km per hour of charging.
- jfk13 6y ago
  Running power -- even just 13A power -- to every parking bay, not to mention ensuring those "simple domestic sockets" are safe to use in all weather conditions, will probably make this quite a bit more expensive than you think.
  - kwhitefoot 6y ago
    Outdoors rated 13A sockets are readily available in every electrical supply shop along with the necessary RCDs. We have similar things here in Norway and have done for at least forty years and we get much worse weather than the UK. I mean they can be buried in the snow, never seems to be a problem. In case you wonder why we had them they were for car engine preheaters. Handy when it is -20C and snowing.
- gambiting 6y ago
  I'm still eagerly awaiting explanation on how this is going to work with terraced houses where there's about 40 houses on each side and people park how and where they want, and most importantly where the local council barely has enough money to fix the worst potholes. But suddenly they are going to dig up a 300 year old street to put down enough cabling and charging points for every car. My question is "with what money".
  - 88 6y ago
    So charge your vehicle at your workplace, or at the shops, or at a dedicated charging station? In the medium term, if this becomes a real problem, properties will be devalued and owners can decide whether it’s worth contributing to the cost of installing the infrastructure. In the long term, most people won’t have private vehicles, so there won’t be any need to store and charge them on public roads.
tillinghast 6y ago
Not if we park there hard enough.
dawnerd 6y ago
So if a car stops charging for whatever reason (fault, someone unplugs, finished charging) they get fined too since they're not actively charging? Seems like a system with more potential problems than it solves. In general I'm against any system that automatically fines people.
- sys_64738 6y ago
  This is in Britain where they constantly foist such automation on the unsuspecting public.
  - cameronh90 6y ago
    Why do you think we're against it?
- mattlondon 6y ago
  Most charge points charge extra if you are sitting in the bay but have completed charging anyway as I understand it. I also think that for safety reasons you cannot just unplug a charging EV car without stopping th charge first (i.e. a child cannot just walk up and knock the plug out etc). If there is a fault in the charger, then I expect a "smart" parking spot to deal with that. To be honest, the better approach in my mind is to put the electric charging bays further away from the entrance to the store or whatever. Quite often EV charging spaces are some of the "best" (i.e. closest) spaces available. Selfish pricks who want to park right by the door don't care if it is a disabled space, an EV space, or not even an official parking space at all - they'll just park where they want. Move the EV charging spaces further away from the store and you'll solve 99% of ICE'ings I reckon.
  - ianai 6y ago
    Agree. Particularly if they’re going to be parked there for hours. This depends on the installer and person paying for the outlet though. I’ve seen both situations.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
teh_klev 6y ago
Sans Paywall: https://archive.is/CS0yx https://archive.is/CS0yx

61 points by Biba89 6y ago

Not sure what's so surprising/interesting about this (I don't have a subscription to read the full article). This nugget in the introduction seems to summarize the tech behind this -- > Sensors installed in electric bays can be used to detect the presence of a vehicle and whether it is being used to recharge the car battery.

sandworm101 6y ago
So it will fine an electric car that parks in the bay if it isn't charging? These are not really parking spots anymore. They are "charging bays". That's cool. Just remember not to park your electric car there with a full battery. I guess if your battery is full, by the time you drive around a while looking for another spot it will be low enough that you will be allowed to use the bay. The few times I've tried to charge an EV at a public non-tesla charging point, it has been a real hassle. The multitude of protocols mean that sometimes it just doesn't work. I'd be very not happy if that meant I would then have to find another spot. Perhaps there is a market for a defeat device, a plug that simulates an electric car, like those HDMI/VGA simulators used to trick motherboards into thinking they are attached to a screen. It probably wouldn't need much of a resistor to simulate minimal charging rates.
- paledot 6y ago
  They're not parking spots. Don't park next to a gas pump if you're not putting gas in the car, even if it has an internal combustion engine.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    I did exactly that this morning. I put gas in my car, paid at the pump, then walked in to buy a drink. I certainly wouldn't do that if people were waiting for the pump, but the option is there and used by drivers regularly.
    - ehvatum 6y ago
      Quiet, the UK will start fining for this too if they think of it.
      - robertlagrant 6y ago
        And we should. This is obvious bad behaviour.
        macintux 6y ago
        Depends on the context. Why waste the fuel to start and move a vehicle if there’s not enough traffic to demand a free pump?
    - Rygian 6y ago
      Not sure if your implication is that you could do the same thing on any other spot (e.g. a spot for disabled, a load/unload spot, a spot reserved for police cars), as long as "people are not waiting for it". In any case, the rule I follow is to move the car where it doesn't block a scarce resource.
    - orev 6y ago
      But you were a customer of the gas pump during that visit/session, so that example doesn’t apply. It would only apply if you used the pump area for parking, when other non-pump spaces were available, and you did not purchase fuel.
      - im3w1l 6y ago
        When he went in to buy a drink there was no need for his car to be buy the pump anymore. He had filled up and paid already. He remained only because it was more convinient than moving the car and then getting the drink. Depending on how many people were waiting and how long it took to get the drink, that was probably the right call.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      When I Supercharge, I get a push notification that idle fees start ($1/minute) 5 minutes after the charge completes. Econ 101: Incentives matter
  - SteveGerencser 6y ago
    People treat gas pumps as parking spots all the time. It's even more frustrating when you are driving a diesel and the only diesel pump at the station is blocked by a gas car and the owner has wandered off to get a coffee or use the restroom, all while multiple gas pumps sit empty.
    - olivermarks 6y ago
      Most petrol/gasoline stations make the majority of their money selling other products, particularly in non urban locations. Milk, newspapers, magazines etc. This business model makes refuelling stations a viable business since the margins on fuel costs are so slim. One of the challenges with the crude political attempts to force EV usage (carrot/subsidies, Stick/fines) is the lack of coherent planning behind it. What happens when/if there are huge numbers of EV's? It's a similar issue with public transport. My sister, a keen cyclist in London, now has two knee replacements and can't really cycle anymore. Public transport is a huge challenge (stairs etc) and driving in London is made ever harder with more and more bicycle lanes, concrete blocks dumped on roads and massive charges for attempting to use her car. None of this is thought through. I'd really like to see some sort of vision democratically presented for comment by citizens before these autocratic decrees and changes are introduced, we seem to have more and more ill considered plans that are not joined up imposed on us, making life harder and harder...
      - bobthepanda 6y ago
        Don’t EVs take longer to charge than a gas fill-up? Presumably that would be better for a model where you want people to stick around and buy things, not worse. At least in the Netherlands, there are basically mini golf carts that are legally bikes for disabled people. https://youtu.be/B9ly7JjqEb0 https://youtu.be/B9ly7JjqEb0
        owenmarshall 6y ago
        > Presumably that would be better for a model where you want people to stick around and buy things, not worse. Gas stations occupy an interesting place in American life: some stations - often those in urban areas - are designed for “get in, grab a pack of peanuts, get out” transactions, but others in rural areas serve as a local gathering area. Pre-Covid (and, let’s be honest, even post-Covid) the gas stations near me are full of people sitting at tables eating hot food and passing time. What is amusing is that the same gas stations that encourage to have people sit and stay a while tend to be located in areas where EVs are extremely uncommon.
  - edgarvaldes 6y ago
    Is this an American thing? To park in a gas pump for minutes after you used it?
    - paledot 6y ago
      Yup. Bear in mind that the gas stations in the US tend towards the mind-bogglingly huge. 12 pumps across the street from 16 pumps is a common sight. (Speaking as a Canadian who used to cross the border a lot when business travel was a thing.)
- labawi 6y ago
  > It probably wouldn't need much of a resistor to simulate minimal charging rates. Resistor wouldn't be a huge problem. A heat sink might be - the chargers typically support 5-50kW¹ charging rates. I'm not sure they would consider 100W or so "charging", so you might end up with something bulky. ¹ a guesstimate
  - nikau 6y ago
    Easy, just need to find a resistor bank like they use on metro trains for braking and bolt it on the roof.
- mft_ 6y ago
  Maybe I’ve been lucky, but here in the EU, I’ve not yet found a non-Tesla charger that won’t charge my Tesla. And also, the mobility+ app (no affiliation) has dealt fine with multiple brands of charger.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    You were definitely lucky. I've driven through Germany last summer and I couldn't find a single charger that worked, every single one required an app, one wouldn't accept my non-german card, second one didn't have a menu in English so I didn't know how to set it up, third one gave me an "unspecified error" and told me to ring their helpline, but upon calling them discovered they are closed on Sunday. So in the end I didn't charge in Germany at all.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Germany seems to run an entirely independent and parallel cards and payments system to the rest of the world. Really frustrating.
      - sofixa 6y ago
        Really? I've had no problems with regular Visa and MasterCard debit cards, while at the same time the in the Netherlands non-Maestros are barely accepted outside of ATMs, even in huge stores ( that's gotten better in the last 2-3 years).
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        Last time I was at a German train station I didn't recognise any of the accepted payment cards as a visitor from elsewhere in Europe. And I note you mention you were specifically ok using debit cards - credit cards are even more problematic than debit cards in Germany. They really don't like accepting them. And try to use an American Express for anything and you will just get a puzzled look!
        6y ago
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > Perhaps there is a market for a defeat device, a plug that simulates an electric car, like those HDMI/VGA simulators used to trick motherboards into thinking they are attached to a screen. It probably wouldn't need much of a resistor to simulate minimal charging rates. EV parking isn't that premium or common where this would be valuable. Also, this kind of anti-social behavior is a good way to get your car keyed when someone rolls up and needs 10 miles of power to get home and sees a jerk in a non EV in the only charging spot.
hannob 6y ago
It's surprising because car drivers are used to the fact that rules are not or rarely enforced. Just think about it: Technically it would be no big problem to enforce speed limits widely. The technology for speeding cameras isn't exceptionally complex, you could mass-produce them and deploy them basically in every street. I'm not aware of any country doing that.
- hansvm 6y ago
  We'd probably need a few other societal changes to make automatic enforcement of the posted speed limit manageable. As an example, if you're on a 50mph road in the USA and assume that your speedometer is calibrated within legal tolerances (and no further) then you'd have to set your cruise control to at most 43mph to ensure that you'd never speed (5mph speedometer error at that speed plus 2mph in speed variability from bumps/hills/etc), you could actually be averaging as low as 39mph in practice, and somebody else behind you with a speedometer off the other direction could think you're going as slowly as 35mph (on average, slower from time to time). I can say from experience that doing so is an easy way to be flipped off, sworn at, passed on the shoulder or a sidewalk, and have police called to your location (occasionally driving the speed limit plus 0-10mph results in similar levels of aggression), even though you can potentially be ticketed for going even a mile per hour faster (most police forces allow a lot more slop in your speed for precisely that kind of reason, but there are definitely a few who don't give a shit because they know you don't want to drive all the way back to the middle of nowhere to fight it) and even though driving that slowly is totally legal in most places. None of that is insurmountable of course, and the easiest fix seems like just having the automated system only ticket you at some threshold above the limit while grandfathering in tighter speedometer tolerances. Aggression from driving the speed limit would probably decrease rapidly as tickets started arriving in the mail.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Technically it would be no big problem to enforce speed limits widely More than you suggest. > The technology for speeding cameras isn't exceptionally complex But speed cameras are just one piece of enforcement. With those and automatic license plate reading you get a piece of evidence that a car violated the limit at a particular time and place, but even if the law is that a set limit is a hard limit (which is not the case in much of the US, where posted limits are often prima facie but not dispositive limits), that's not all you need for enforcement. You also need legal process to weigh potential counterevidence, to deal with contested identity of actual drivers, etc. This isn't technically complex, but it adds a lot of overhead, which is why even places which legally allow this mechanism deploy it selectively, not comprehensively.

kwhitefoot 6y ago

Would be better to spend the money that this will cost on fitting a simple domestic socket in every parking bay. That we even my Tesla will gain 13 km per hour of charging.

jfk13 6y ago
Running power -- even just 13A power -- to every parking bay, not to mention ensuring those "simple domestic sockets" are safe to use in all weather conditions, will probably make this quite a bit more expensive than you think.
- kwhitefoot 6y ago
  Outdoors rated 13A sockets are readily available in every electrical supply shop along with the necessary RCDs. We have similar things here in Norway and have done for at least forty years and we get much worse weather than the UK. I mean they can be buried in the snow, never seems to be a problem. In case you wonder why we had them they were for car engine preheaters. Handy when it is -20C and snowing.
gambiting 6y ago
I'm still eagerly awaiting explanation on how this is going to work with terraced houses where there's about 40 houses on each side and people park how and where they want, and most importantly where the local council barely has enough money to fix the worst potholes. But suddenly they are going to dig up a 300 year old street to put down enough cabling and charging points for every car. My question is "with what money".
- 88 6y ago
  So charge your vehicle at your workplace, or at the shops, or at a dedicated charging station? In the medium term, if this becomes a real problem, properties will be devalued and owners can decide whether it’s worth contributing to the cost of installing the infrastructure. In the long term, most people won’t have private vehicles, so there won’t be any need to store and charge them on public roads.

tillinghast 6y ago

Not if we park there hard enough.

dawnerd 6y ago

So if a car stops charging for whatever reason (fault, someone unplugs, finished charging) they get fined too since they're not actively charging? Seems like a system with more potential problems than it solves. In general I'm against any system that automatically fines people.

sys_64738 6y ago
This is in Britain where they constantly foist such automation on the unsuspecting public.
- cameronh90 6y ago
  Why do you think we're against it?
mattlondon 6y ago
Most charge points charge extra if you are sitting in the bay but have completed charging anyway as I understand it. I also think that for safety reasons you cannot just unplug a charging EV car without stopping th charge first (i.e. a child cannot just walk up and knock the plug out etc). If there is a fault in the charger, then I expect a "smart" parking spot to deal with that. To be honest, the better approach in my mind is to put the electric charging bays further away from the entrance to the store or whatever. Quite often EV charging spaces are some of the "best" (i.e. closest) spaces available. Selfish pricks who want to park right by the door don't care if it is a disabled space, an EV space, or not even an official parking space at all - they'll just park where they want. Move the EV charging spaces further away from the store and you'll solve 99% of ICE'ings I reckon.
- ianai 6y ago
  Agree. Particularly if they’re going to be parked there for hours. This depends on the installer and person paying for the outlet though. I’ve seen both situations.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago

teh_klev 6y ago

Sans Paywall: https://archive.is/CS0yx https://archive.is/CS0yx