The EV Drivers Dilemma
Published on: Aug 16, 2019
The EVs Drivers Dilemma

I faced something I call “The EV Driver’s Dilemma” when I was on holiday. My family and I spent a whole week in a place in the Alps that has banned cars completely. We had to go there by cable car. At the valley station, six EV chargers were available, four normal ones and two Tesla Destination Chargers.

Here’s the dilemma:

If I use the charger, my car will be charged completely, which gives me enough range to get home after my holidays. However, the battery will be charged after some four hours, but the charger will be blocked for other users for 6.8 days.

If I don’t use the charger, it will be available for others, but I won’t have enough range to get home after the holidays. So I would either have to hang around for four hours before driving home or have a break at a Supercharger that I could have avoided.

If I use it and take the cable car down to move my vehicle to another parking space after a few hours, it will cost me almost 30 Swiss Francs (30 USD) which is equivalent to some 150 kWh in Switzerland (or a range of 700km).

None of these options is reasonable or good. But it’s just the way the technology works. If you want to, replace “holidays” with “go shopping” or “being at work”. Replace “pay 30 USD” with “you have to walk through the whole city instead of enjoying another Cappuccino”. These words are just variables.

The dilemma remains the same: if one car is at the charger, no other car can use it. And if charging takes more than a few minutes, the car won’t be removed on time. Or it is simply not practical for most situations.

What do you think? What would you do?

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