One thing that always bothers me is that, from what I've seen, queuing for charging seems to be based on coordination and trust between EV drivers. Surely it would make far more sense to have some kind of virtual queuing system built in. Then when a charger becomes free it automatically sends you an alert and gives you some period to connect to the charger.
Longer term, I would hope charging stations would be designed with a layout which lets cars queue sensibly.
While it might make sense to soft lock a stall for queue, that'd be pretty hard to coordinate and wouldn't work well cross manufacturer (you now either need a universal registration protocol or some sort of physical infrastructure that enforces a queue).
IMO, the better solution and the one that seems to be happening is more chargers. These charge providers have the numbers on how many people are using their stations so it's not really impossible to map out and plan out where new charging stations are needed.
During surge usage, Tesla is deploying temporary charge stations to handle the extra load [1]
[1] https://electrek.co/2024/12/23/tesla-deploys-a-fleet-of-mega...
You are correct, which is why I’m serious when I say that I’m surprised there haven’t been reports of physical altercations by now. And even if not fisticuffs, how about saving me the stress of trying to figure out the ad hoc queuing system? The chargers are often way the hell out at the edge of the parking lot, no one is losing usable parking spots by making a few painted lanes.
You can tell nobody thought it through, just pushing all the chargers up against the borders of properties because that's what requires the least construction and least coordination with property owners. Customers get the shaft.
If EA charging sucks... well there's pretty much nothing you can do about it.
And there's a new >800V+ cabinet
I've been vicariously experiencing the adjustment to EV life through a busy of mine who recently got an Ioniq 5 (2024, so not the tesla charging port). He does not have access to charging at home but does have the 2 years of free* charging at Electrify America (EA) stations. The charge infrastructure isn't that bad for him. While EV stations aren't nearly as prevalent as gas stations, he has multiple EA station options within his regular driving radius, and far more of he were to leave the EA network. Though it's LA, so it's probably the best in the US.
The biggest issue isn't finding a station or being confronted with nonfunctional chargers, it's the variability of charging duration among users and the pre-charging wait logistics. He gets 30 minutes of charging per day for free, but as long as he goes to a 350V charger, he'll hit 80% regardless of his initial charge state in under 30 minutes. Often, he's charging from around 40% to 80-something in under 15 minutes.
The trouble starts with the uniqueness of his car's charging rate. Plenty of EVs are not designed to charge at that rate, and it's a waste to have them slowly stopping electrons from the fire hose of the highest voltage chargers.
Combine mismatch that with the initial considerations of charge points/stations, when EVs took so long to charge that there was no point in considering a queue waiting to hook up because no one would ever wait for potentially hours and hours for the one car let along two or more car's ahead of them to charge and depart. So EV stations weren't designed like gas stations, they just get stuck in little pockets of empty space or on the periphery of a parking lot, probably marketed to the lot owners as a was to lie in potential shoppers who are going to have to spend the hour or more while they wait for their cars to charge doing something, so why not spending money at the mall or grocery store the chargers are in the lot of.
Unfortunately, while that's how the EV stations have developed, that's not really how the cars have. Sure, he might get stuck at a charging station in line behind a Nissan Leaf on 10% battery, but it seems easy more likely he'll be in line for 1 of 3 chargers with 4 or 5 other fairly fast charging EVs. So now he's in the supermarket parking lot awkwardly positioned with a bunch of other EV drivers vigilantly minding a virtual queue communicated through raised eyebrows, grimaces, and expressive stink-eye. There's often probably enough time waiting his turn to go on and do some shopping, but there's no way to do that and maintain the queue. Once he's hooked up, there's usually only enough time to run through like it was a gas station convenience store.