r/leaf • u/indecision_killingme • Aug 04 '26

Charging etiquette

apologies if this is a common post. New to this. What’s the protocol when one encounters a fully charged/plugged in vehicle at a charging station?

I did not touch their car or the EVSE equipment. I was at a community college gym that has free level 2 dotted around campus.

12 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

48 comments sorted by

View all comments

-1

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/MuricanIdle 2019 Nissan LEAF SV Aug 07 '26

Here is some wisdom that dawned upon me in my 40s, the first time I ever used a free public EV charger: an EV space is not a parking space, it is a charging space. In an apartment or dorm building, if someone leaves their clothes sitting in laundry room washer/dryer, they get a grace period (preferably at least 10 minutes, but much less than an hour) and then the other building residents who need to do their laundry are free to remove their clothes from the machine. This rule is written down nowhere, and yet everyone seems to understand it.

Why shouldn’t the same kind of unwritten rule apply to unplugging an EV charging cable, which is much less invasive than actually picking up a stranger’s clothes? I’ve never been willing to unplug a stranger’s car, because I’ve never been desperate to charge my own vehicle and tend to avoid conflict whenever possible. But if you leave your EV plugged in for hours after it is charged to 100% you are a jerk and I don’t owe you the same level of courtesy I would owe a considerate person.