victorian electric vehicle trial mid-term report - Department of Transport

The pushback by parking operatorsagainst reserving parking assets solelyfor the use of EV drivers highlightsanother challenge within the publiccharging business model – protectingand promoting utilisation of the EVcharging infrastructure asset. Publiccharging outlets may be underutilisedfor a range of reasons:• Inappropriate occupancy – wherenon-EV drivers, or EV drivers whodo not use the charging facility,occupy the parking/charging bayeither mistakenly or in spite of the‘EV charging only’ restrictions,thereby preventing EV driversfrom accessing the chargingfacility; a U.S. survey of EV ownersfound that the Toyota Priushybrid-electric (not the plug-in)was the most likely vehicle to beinappropriately occupying anEV-only parking/charging bay(PSRC 2010)• Customer confidence – wherewould-be users err towards nonusedue to a lack of confidencethat the parking/charging facilitywill be available when they needit; many trial householdparticipants provided feedbackon this issue, particularly for theMelbourne Airport EV parking/charging facilities• Commuter charging – whereusers occupy the parking/charging bay for most of the dayin spite of needing the chargingfacility for only a fraction of thistime. Anecdotal reports fromCalifornia suggest that EV driversare conscious of how much theelectricity used in a chargingsession costs, reducing theirappetite to pay a premium forextended occupancy.A range of measures wereidentified to promote publiccharging asset utilisation:• Signage/ground-marking –standardisation of the EV parkingsymbol depicted in Figure 31,and inclusion of this designin directional and restrictionsignage (Figure 49) and groundmarkingwas felt to be themost cost effective deterrentfor inappropriate occupancy, inaddition to which it increased thevisibility and marketing benefit forthe site owner• Real-time/remote chargingstatus reporting and reservationcapability – provided to varyingdegrees by the trial chargingservice providers; provides userswith better information andconfidence but does not eliminateinappropriate occupancy• Parking technology – which ifused in combination with thereal-time/remote charging statusreporting can address uncertaintyabout inappropriate occupancy;preliminary investigations foundthat there was limited appetiteto integrate the technology intothe charging service providernetworks at this time• Enforcement – training of parkingofficers for on-street EV parking/charging restriction enforcementhas been agreed in-principlewith the City of Melbourne,but deferred until an on-streetparking/charging location iscommissioned; conversely,parking enforcement for manycommercial car-parks was foundto be haphazard or non-existent;enforcement also fails to addressinappropriate occupancy beyondserving an infringement noticeon the offending vehicles• Low-value parking assetutilisation – discussions withcharging service providers inthe U.S. found that some werepursuing the least-utilised parkingassets in their negotiationswith parking facility operators,primarily to gain access to thesite but with the added benefitof reducing the likelihood ofinappropriate occupancy• Charging etiquette – where aprotocol is developed that allowsEV drivers to unplug other vehiclesto allow them to charge theirown in a neighbouring location;this is best suited to workplace/commuter charging, where simplesignage has been developed byusers in the US informing otherdrivers of their charging outletavailability for this purpose(refer to Appendix E – EV chargingcourtesy signage)• Interoperability/network roaming –increasing the number of potentialusers by promoting the ability ofusers to roam across the networkis an agreed medium to longertermobjective for chargingservice providers which was feltto be a lower priority at this endof the industry development(refer to Section 5.1.4).CREATING A MARKET 95