Furious and ignorant Nissan Leaf driver

He must be a self appointed "Charge Police". Both cars charging? Sounds like harmony to me, until humans get involved.

 

...which is one of the reasons I feel public charging will never work. If anywhere near 10% of driver's have pure EVs, there will never be enough charging stations on the planet to prevent "entitlement" fights.

 

Errrr, the number of charging stations will surely increase with the number of EV drivers provided the car park can charge a bit extra for the charge to make it worthwhile? It will become a pure business proposition.

 

Would an electric car that did not require charging make him happier in that parking place?

 

Range anxiety has driven the poor man mad. When I pull in to charge I don't get upset if all the stations are full. I get bummed. But I know where all the stations are in the area.

What seems to be common practice in Los Angeles is Tesla owners have a very BAD habit of taking a blink or chargepoint space, so you think there is a space available because the network tells you one is available, but there is a tesla parked in the space ( not charging ) and you are forced to drive even further to find a charging spot.

Now THAT gets me mad. _._

 

Once they start charging for the charge, much of the problem will disappear.
As for the OP, I would agree that the LEAF owner over reacted. To be fair though, there is little difference between a PiP and standard Prius.
Obviously, once you showed him the plug, or if he had taken more than a cursory glance at the badge he should have seen that it was indeed a plugin.

 

It sounds like he is suffering a lot of stress from range anxiety. It is not nice to take it out on you like that. He should have apologized to you after seeing the charging port on PiP.

 

My guess is that you just happened to meet this fellow after a particularly bad day.

I would bet that he has had issues in the past with folks in hybrids parking in charging spots and by the time you point out that you had a plug-in he was well on a roll and could not stop if he wanted to.

 

Thanks for your post. I'm glad I decided not the buy the PPI. I'm hoping someday that I could run my standard Prius using natural gas.

 

I hope you don't meet a furious and ignorant Hummer driver at the gas station.

 

I only spend about 10 minutes at the gas station filling up the Prius and my two 5-gallon gas containers. With the extra gas in the containers, I don't have to go back for another 3 weeks. Unlike PPI owners, I don't have to deal with idiots at public charging stations and that's assuming you're lucky enough to find an empty spot. From what I heard, most of them are taken up by squatters.

 

Apropos of nothing, can I ask why can't you do that now?

 

As soon as my car is out of warranty and I could find someone to install a conversion kit, I would do it. However, I have to see how big the tank is going to be. The Prius cargo space isn't that big.

 

I have no interest in public charging stations. Going that 12 miles at the equivalent of 100 mpg instead of 55mpg isn't worth the trouble.

 

Ditch the spare and you'd get something like a 60Litre toroid in the space, I'd have thought.

 

If you want to run on natural gas, you are better off with the Civic NGV.

 

I think the Leaf driver misinterpreted the sign which said "Electric Car only".
He assumed it is for EV only and not for plugins. Just ignorance.

 

We don't have that model in the UK - is it purely LPG (as we term it) fuelled?

 

You'd be upset if you saw a regular Prius in the only available charging spot as well. I wouldn't judge this person too harshly. He just wasn't aware of a Prius Plug-in.

Once educated, he should've apologized. So really, it's just a person who cannot admit he is wrong. We all have our road rages.