Electric car drivers confess their public charging sins

Many electric car drivers have fallen victim to poor etiquette at public charging points but now, as part of a recent study, over 50% have also put their hands up and confessed to contributing towards one of the biggest problems themselves.

Sainsbury’s Smart Charge asked the UK’s electric car owners what their biggest annoyances were when topping up at a public charger, and so-called ‘ghost charging’ was the biggest offence. Ghost charging is where a driver hooks their EV up to a charging station in order to nab that parking space, even though the car doesn’t require a top-up. 

So who are the culprits of this shocking crime? They may be highly irritated by it, but a whopping 51% of Sainsbury’s participants also admitted to using this tactic themselves. A third of this group also said they’d done it on multiple occasions.

Sainsbury’s research suggests that cities are particular hotspots, with Birmingham, Cardiff and Belfast being home to some of the most frequent offenders.

The survey also showed that around 70% of EV drivers believed that a lack of charger etiquette is a blight on electric car ownership, so Sainsbury's has recruited etiquette expert William Hanson to create an official guide on how to behave at the chargers and, hopefully, reduce some of the nation’s stress.

It’s not only ghost-charging that’s frustrating the UK’s electric motorists, though, so here are the UK’s top 10 public charging irritations.

1. Not enough charging bays (35%)
2. Cars using bays for longer than required (34%)
3. Long waits (31%) 
4. Poor parking (29%)
5. Tangled cables (26%)
6. Ghost charging (24%)
7. Drivers ignoring instructions (22%)
8. Leaving litter at charge points (20%)
9. Talkative strangers (18%) 
10. Other people interfering with a charging station (17%)