A Tesla vehicle had difficulty charging because a pickup truck was icing, but it got satisfying justice when the police ended up lifting the pickup truck off the ground with a crane.
Icing is what the EV community calls an internal combustion engine vehicle blocking a charging station for electric vehicles.
Sometimes drivers do it because they don’t pay attention, don’t care, or they don’t think it’s really important even though it’s the equivalent of an electric vehicle parking at the pump of a gas station.
At times, they even do it on purpose to annoy EV owners because they see them as the enemy for some reason.
We previously reported on pickup truck owners getting together to block Tesla Supercharger stations in the US.
In certain jurisdictions, they are starting to act on the issue and give tickets for people who park at charging stations without plugging in.
A great example has been making the rounds on social media this week: the Berlin police posted that they used a crane to remove a pickup truck that was parked at a charging station that a Tesla Model S was trying to use:
Unser #A11 kümmert sich auch um Schwergewichte:
Hätte der große Blaue tatsächlich die Ladesäule angezapft, wäre vermutlich in den umliegenden Haushalten der Strom ausgefallen.
^tsm pic.twitter.com/ilxy0TvVP7— Polizei Berlin (@polizeiberlin) November 9, 2019
The translation might not be accurate, but it sounds like the police were being a little cheeky about the situation:
“Our # A11 also takes care of heavyweights: If the big blue had actually tapped the charging station, the electricity would probably have been lost in the surrounding households.”
In some countries and states, they can issue $100 fines for parking in a charging station with a non-electric vehicle or without plugging in.
Electrek’s Take
It looks like they don’t mess around in Berlin and beyond a fine, they can impound your vehicle for being inconsiderate.
We have been seeing a lot of icing today and I think the problem will persist for a while, but it will die down as EVs become more widely accepted and people are more familiar with them.
It should address both people who do it due to a lack of knowledge and the few who do it out of spite will quickly find out that it’s not worth the hassle of having to pay a fine or getting your car impounded if you are more hardcore like the people in Berlin.
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