A Tesla driver has been assaulted after spending more than four hours at a free charging station and preventing other drivers from accessing the site.
The driver was pictured in a loading area at the Woolworths car park in Kirrawee, south of Sydney, sitting in the front seat and “watching movies”.
“If this is you, do the community a favour and slap yourself,” wrote one furious Woolies customer on social media, alongside a photo of the car.
‘It’s absolutely selfish when the goal is to ensure that Woolworths shoppers can get paid for free.’
The time it takes for an electric vehicle (EV) to fully charge depends on the brand, with some Teslas taking up to eight hours.
As this may mean that some cars need to be charged overnight, most drivers use their own home charging station.
When public charging stations are installed for community use in places such as shop car parks and petrol stations, it is frowned upon for drivers to spend hours in a single space.
The outraged Kirrawee shopper said there was a Tesla Supercharger, which charges at faster speeds, available “literally across the road”.
A Tesla driver (pictured) has been criticised for spending more than four hours sitting in his car while it charged for free in a supermarket car park, denying others the chance to charge their electric vehicle.
They said the person who spent four hours getting a free load at Woolworths should have used that one instead.
Anger over the way electric vehicles are charged is growing as vehicle sales rise and the number of charging stations fails to keep up with demand.
An electric vehicle driver was branded selfish on Monday after parking “horizontally” at a charging station and preventing other drivers from using the spot.
A photo of a white BYD was shared on Facebook showing the car plugged into a charging station in the coastal Hobart suburb of Howrah.
The unoccupied car was seen parked sideways on the loading bays, restricting access to other drivers and blocking two parking spaces for motorbikes. The passerby who took the photo vented his anger on the driver.
“Congratulations to this person who managed to plug into the right charger yesterday, while parking sideways in front of the left charging area AND a couple of extra motorcycle parking spots,” they wrote.
The BYD driver’s selfish act and other similar incidents recently have raised questions about electric vehicle etiquette. Pictured: An electric vehicle parked in various spaces at a Queensland shopping centre in May
Social media users were quick to condemn the BYD driver.
“Don’t expect anyone who buys an electric car to have a brain,” wrote one.
“They probably ran out of charge and had to push it there,” another added.
“They’re reducing the population by taking up all the parking spaces so anyone else with a regular damn car has nowhere to park,” was another response.
“To be fair, he drives an electric vehicle; the sense of entitlement comes naturally to him,” wrote another.
There are around 198,000 electric vehicles on Australian roads, two-thirds of them purchased since 2022 and 87,000 of them bought in the past 12 months.
Within the next 40 years, up to 85 per cent of vehicles on Australian roads will be electric.
Chinese electric carmakers are expected to flood Australia with cheap imports as the Americans and Europeans raise tariffs to protect their local vehicle makers (pictured, a NIO ETS electric vehicle in Beijing)
Much of that growth will come from China, with Chinese electric carmakers expected to flood Australia with cheap imports as the Americans and Europeans embark on a trade war to protect their local vehicle makers.
A dozen new Chinese car brands are expected to arrive in Australia over the next two years, a development described as “unprecedented” that will “massively change the market”.
Australia has had a free trade agreement with China since 2015, meaning cars from our largest trading partner are sold to Australian motorists without import duties or taxes.
Australians can now buy cheap Chinese EVs, including the BYD Dolphin for $36,890, the MG4 from $39,990 and the GWM Ora from $35,990.