TLeaf wrote:
Considering that so many of these new charging stations are in pay-to-park or semi-private structures, I've got to admit that I wouldn't find the CarWings info terribly useful unless they start putting in some specific directions to these things (3rd floor of pay-to-park garage, SE corner; free underground garage aisle 2; E side of Qwest Field pay lot; etc.). I guess this is where the crowd-sourcing type of online app would be more useful; you could not only find out where the charging stations are at, but what condition they're in, how accessible they are, etc. Mated with some system for telling you which charging stations are available would be a god-send, at least until charging stations become so ubiquitous that such apps are no longer necessary (did you ever need an app to tell you whether or not a gas pump was available?).
I haven't seen any pay-to-park or semi-private charging stations yet. I have been seeing most of them instead popping up at publicly available city government buildings, Firestations, Schools, and Bellevue Square Mall. You do need ChargePoint Pass card to use them, but so far, other than Microsoft, all of the charging stations I have used are free.
I wish I could find a nice phone app to list locations so I didn't have to pre-locate them via the ChargePoint.net website before going places. I can't seem to get the chargePoint website to work in my Droid. ugh
It is frustrating to know that there are so many charging stations available and Carwings is blind to them.... even though it is supposedly "adding" new ones when I run an update.
I look forward to the day that most grocery stores, theaters, etc, have charging stations. It is nice seeing so many around.