Parking at the airport

This is the employee parking lot at the airport where I work.

It might be a little little hard looking at it but can you tell me what’s wrong with this picture?

Well, for starters the space I’m parked in has a sign that says you can only park here for 72 hours. The space opposite says the same thing. The next two spaces adjacent to me and also opposite of them have 10 hour parking limits on them.

So lets start there. As a pilot I can be gone for up to 4 days at a time. Yet the limitations on the space are 3 days, not four. Another thing you might notice is that I’m the only EV parked there. Now I’m being a bit unfair with that statement because when I took this picture the spaces had just opened up. There is also special parking for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles in a  parking garage at the terminal. Probably not for long though as these spaces are very new. At the other garage there are no charging stations. This parking lot is far away and nobody wants to park here. It’s not covered and it’s not protected. It should also have lots of solar panels as this is the desert. But that’s another issue. Then you could charge all the EV’s you wanted to for free.

But lets get back to the other problems with the picture above. My car and most EV’s don’t take days to charge. Generally only hours. From 2-18 depending on the amperage of the charger.

The best way to install Car Charging Stations.

My vehicle only took 3 hours to charge since when I parked there I was half way charged already. So now I’m there just taking up valuable real estate for another 2-3 days while somebody else could be using it. Had they placed the chargers like this picture at Target, when I was done charging someone else could park next to me and take over the plug I was using.

The next issue. The odds of all the 10 hour spaces getting used here are pretty slim. There should be far more 72 hour spaces than 10 hour spaces. Most of the folks working at the Burger King are not going to have Electric Vehicles. Hybrids maybe. Most of the people parking here are going to be Flight Crew. That will change in the future as the price of EV’s comes down but right now EV’s are generally second vehicles and the median family income of EV owners is 100k a year.

Another thing you should do as an Airport Parking Manager is make the spaces next to the regular electrical outlets in the parking garages EV only spaces. Most of us have the equipment to plug in our cars just like all the people in the airport who plug in their cell phones and laptops. And over the course of the 3-4 days we are on a trip our cars would charge up in plenty of time for when we return. If my car was on empty when I got to the airport it would only take 15-18 hours to charge off a 100v outlet. A Tesla on empty would take maybe 36 hours.

While I do appreciate what you are doing for the EV community by installing these chargers, there is no question you could do more for less.