Accessible / Disabled EV Charging bays

MouldyOldDough

Are there any Accessible charging bays for EV's anywhere ?

Our Tesco has just added a half dozen non accessible bays - with the machines mounted high up on a kerb - there's no way that a wheelchair user could reach .......

and what makes it even worse - is that Tesco decided to get rid of 6 blue badge parking spaces in order to create the space for these useless bays !!

bazdvd

hardly useless if they are for charging an electric car. I cant recall ever seeing any accessible petrol pump bays either.

user1977

bazdvd said:

hardly useless if they are for charging an electric car. I cant recall ever seeing any accessible petrol pump bays either.

Petrol pumps generally have staff available to assist though - not aware of any such expectation for EV chargers.

bazdvd

user1977 said:

bazdvd said:

hardly useless if they are for charging an electric car. I cant recall ever seeing any accessible petrol pump bays either.

Petrol pumps generally have staff available to assist though - not aware of any such expectation for EV chargers.

petrol stations generally dont have people to assist. all the ones where i am tend to be staffed by one person behind the till. Im sure a Tesco worker would be happy to assist someone that wanted to charge their car.
The wheelchair user could also charge at a garage or any other charging point if no help were available. 

oldernonethewiser

Although not specifically accessible my local Tesco has chargers all on one level and in fairly large spaces (larger than "standard")

MouldyOldDough

bazdvd said:

hardly useless if they are for charging an electric car. I cant recall ever seeing any accessible petrol pump bays either.

but pumps are generally at floor level and generally not hidden away from the front of the site

user1977

bazdvd said:

user1977 said:

bazdvd said:

hardly useless if they are for charging an electric car. I cant recall ever seeing any accessible petrol pump bays either.

Petrol pumps generally have staff available to assist though - not aware of any such expectation for EV chargers.

petrol stations generally dont have people to assist. all the ones where i am tend to be staffed by one person behind the till. Im sure a Tesco worker would be happy to assist someone that wanted to charge their car.

Petrol stations generally advertise that they can assist - admittedly that might not be practical where they are single-manned, but the ones I frequent rarely are.

While I'm sure in principle a Tesco worker could assist, are they advertising that as a service? Are they trained or allowed (by the management) to do so? The chargers aren't operated by Tesco.

born_again

MouldyOldDough said:

Are there any Accessible charging bays for EV's anywhere ?

Our Tesco has just added a half dozen non accessible bays - with the machines mounted high up on a kerb - there's no way that a wheelchair user could reach .......

and what makes it even worse - is that Tesco decided to get rid of 6 blue badge parking spaces in order to create the space for these useless bays !!

Yes. Gridserve Electric Forecourts have disabled spaces & staff to help.
Certainly Norwich does. I would expect the other to be the same.

Grumpy_chap

"Accessible" bays for EV charging seems to have several elements to it, not all immediately obvious at first consideration:

 - Are the bays large enough?  In my experience, EV charging bays seem to be larger than standard parking bays, more akin to the size of disabled bays.  That seems to be as would be required (I have not actually measured EV bay versus disabled bay so stand to be corrected).

 - Are the bays near to destination / facilities?  In my experience, EV bays seem to be at the extremes - either the nearest to facilities / store or the furthest.  The ones nearest tend to get ICE'd which I suppose is the equivalent of anyone just parking in disabled bay.  

 - Are the actual charge plugs reachable?  I never considered this before.  Petrol stations do tend to have a service level where you can toot the horn for service.  I have no experience of how reliable that is.  I would tend to agree with the OP that most EV charging bays don't have that option.  The Gridserve stations, as mentioned above, apparently do but I cannot confirm.  I have to say the Gridserve stations are pretty much something else with their whole service culture, so I can believe they offer this as well.  I imagine a lot of venues would have people that can assist, but that the individuals would need "hunting down" as it were, which is not really good enough.

Are there other factors to consider as to whether EV charging facilities are sufficiently disabled friendly?
Can the OP share their experiences?

bazdvd

OP said they used 6 previously disabled bays to create 6 charging bays so i doubt they are normal size or tucked away in a corner and rather near the entrance. Op also does not say how high the access to the charger is and if they are accessible via a ramp as a curb is mentioned. perhaps a picture would help.

Herzlos

This time he actually has a point, there really isn't much accessible charging spaces.

Traditionally in a staffed petrol station, you'd park at a pump, put your hazards on and someone would come out and fill it for you, job done.

All of the EV spaces I can picture are normal width* so getting a wheelchair between parked cars would be a nightmare unless you can get an end space, and the actual charger setup may not be very accessible depending on location, cable length and charging port etc.

It's certainly made a bit more prominent since Motability are encouraging people to use EVs, but it's only a relatively small subset of users who can't use an EV (you'd need to be a permanent wheelchair user without any kind of carer or help) and even then there are still ICE options. 

What'll happen after ICE cars stop production by 2035? I' mnot sure, though hybrids will still be a thing.

Maybe with larger ranges it will be less of an issue. I know there's been experiments with self-connecting chargers that'd make most of the issue redundant too. Maybe it'll be possible to have a van come to your car and charge it.

Instead of using it to bash EV's again, MouldyOldDough, you should be contacting your MP, motoring orgs like the AA, and disability activist groups to try and make the problem visible and hopefully solved.

*I actually think we should be making all parking spaces at least 1ft wider and longer for the sake of everyone, because it's not just people with blue badges that need more access space.