After 4 years, I am going to be done with my Sparks

[CSW]

I don't WANT to use public charger either, but I HAVE to when I want to take Spark on a moderate journey.

I agree on placement of EV spots, WAY out on the parking lot would be better, but the issue is electrical supply, the store
or whatever does not want to dig a ditch and run expensive wire way out into the lot when they can just put then next to the power supply for cheaper.

And on your sticker idea, I agree as well, except maybe a letter under the wiper would due fine. I have been meaning to type
up a letter for various violations to keep in my car for use, like:

hybrid in ev spot
hybrid in supercharger spot
ICE car in EV spot of any kind
EV car in spot not charging
EV car in spot not even plugged in
plug-in hybrid in supercharger spot
plug-in hyrbid not charging
plug-in hybrid using busy charger location when not necessary
Tesla in supercharger spot not charging

BUT, I give up instead, I have served my time, I still have 8 months on 2015 spark lease and 20 on my 2016 spark lease.
So in 8 months I will have an efficient gas car & a Spark and will happily bump along.

 

[CCIE]

Again, I'd strongly advocate you look a the Volt. It's the best of both worlds.

I agree that only having an EV is impractical for most people. I drive our Spark EV most of the time. My wife drives our Gen1 Volt most of the time. And we have a Mazda CX-5 that we use if we need a larger vehicle. Having N+1 cars for N drivers is also great when one car has an issue.

 

[mitechman47]

I totally agree, living here in the Ann Arbor Michigan area charging stations are very few, only Chevy and Nissan dealers which I have no desire to sit there for a charge and 5 at the airport and a few scattered around the Ann Arbor parking structures. What really bothers me is the amount of Volts that are plugged in. They are not even pure electric, just cheap people who don't want to buy gas. The airport is pretty much volts parked there in the short term parking. I don't have enough range in my sparkev to goto the airport and back so even if I could charge there for an hour or so before a flight would be good but there are never spots open. The only places open is at Ikea, and that is only because you have to pay and like I said, Volt people are cheap, they would rather have free electricity even if it only costs basically pennies to charge their cars. I am just starting to see Bolts around the area, the local dealer has 6 of them. I went and test drove one and was really not impressed, I like the way my sparkev drives and I don't want all that unnecessary electronic monitoring/lane change stuff on these newer cars. Seems everything is getting so complicated with so many options it's no wonder cars and trucks are getting just way too expensive. I am also just about ready to sell my spark but every time I drive it it still puts a smile on my face (until I see the awful range left). I average 50 mile range in the winter and 72 in the summer. BTW, the bolt I checked out had a range of around 165 miles due to the extreme cold, I read others suffer range drop like this in cold climates, still like 3x the sparkev range. My driving is 1/2 country roads and 1/2 everybody in a hurry highway, which the speed limit here is 70 so the average morning is usually 78 or so.
I just wish they had more charging stations here. I also found an adapter that will allow you to use the standard Tesla charging station, it's about $450 and I'm sure it would piss off Tesla owners too, dont know if I would try it, plus that's a lot of money just for a small amount of electricity.

 

[mitechman47]

And I forgot to mention Michigan just raised the registration fees for ev's, my 2017 tag was $58, my 2018 was $198! Seems they want to collect money for roads (which they suck anyways), so instead of collecting gas tax they found another way to get money from us EV owners. Wonder how much they charge for a Bolt as they tax by the value here.....

 

[CSW]

Plug-in hybrids are ruining public charging for pure EV drivers.....

They have already started to and it is going to get much worse.
(see my previous rants)

They are indeed being cheap getting their 20 cents of free juice at the great expense of us pure EV drivers being
ars-out.
And/or they are being lazy and want a frontal parking spot.
Either way, WEAK.

The Spark is a great car if you just use it for a 40-50 mile round-trip commute and not much else.

The Volt is a nice car, but if I ever got one, I assure you I would NEVER park and plug into public charger spots....
I would like to and want to, but I would not. Simple as that.

 

[SparkE]

Plug-in hybrids are ruining public charging for pure EV drivers.....

Sorry, but PHEVs have just as much right as full-electric to plug into public charging. In fact, since their electric range is even smaller than a Spark's, they need to plug in more often in order to save the air quality, etc. Remember that Volts have 40-ish miles of all-electric range, no 80.

The only problem I have with any vehicle parked at/blocking a public charging spot is if it is not charging (that could mean not plugged in, and it could mean fully charged).

 

[CSW]

Plug-in hybrids have these other charging stations they can use to charge back to full that a spark cannot use......
they are called gas stations and they are widely available for use.

The spark can only go 80 miles period. The Volt can go 300 miles, refill in 5 minutes, and go another 300.

But park there all you like, like I said, I am out and don't want to debate it any longer. Party-on dude.

 

[Chris101]

Sorry, but PHEVs have just as much right as full-electric to plug into public charging. In fact, since their electric range is even smaller than a Spark's, they need to plug in more often in order to save the air quality, etc. Remember that Volts have 40-ish miles of all-electric range, no 80.

^ Wow this sure sounds like this discussion can get ugly in a hurry. As already stated, the MAJOR difference is ability to get somewhere. Volt owners don't seem to realize (or care?) that they can still go well over 200 miles thanks to a gas tank and ability to fuel up very easily while many Spark EV owners can't even get back home (or continue on their journey) without being able to plug in and charge up! AND This is the massive fundamental difference here.

Talking about 'environment' and air quality is all well and good (ra-ra I'm doing good for the environment) but if same said VOLT owners were really that concerned about only running electric for this reason, why did they buy a 40-ish mile range hybrid instead of a true EV with at least double the range? OH RIGHT, because they wanted the flexibility of going as far as they wanted and not have to worry about getting stuck somewhere... so they want it both ways.... the right to dominate EV plugs AND go as far as they want, I understand now.

But this is the the true sad reality. Everyone else is so 'me me' focused that they refuse to consider the other side of their actions. I have a plug so I'm going to use it whenever possible and everyone else doesn't matter in their world.... Its not any different than how people drive on roads today, expecting everyone else to 'get out of their way' or stop for them (because how often have you seen stop signs ignored or treated barely as yield signs?) and all the other self-centered driver actions out there? This whole EV plug availability is simply an extension of the 'me-ness' in today's society unfortunately

 

[NORTON]

Hang in there everyone.
We are still 'The Early Adopters'.
As we tell the kids, 'It gets better'....

 

[SparkevBlogspot]

'It gets better'....

I'm not so sure if it'll get better. If anything, things got lot worse with Bolt's release. Even just few dozen free charging Bolts clog up chargers in the whole city, and there will be tons more free charging new Leaf and i3, not to mention eGolf, FocusEV, iPace, Ioniq, Kona, etc. etc. The charging problem will only get worse.

For battery EV that use public charging, only Tesla makes sense. Unfortunately, they are giant land-yachts. Even Tesla 3 rivals size of my mini van. After driving SparkEV and oh-so-easy parking and maneuverability, it'll be hard to go back to driving boats.

 

[MrDRMorgan]

Plug-in hybrids are ruining public charging for pure EV drivers.....

Sorry, but PHEVs have just as much right as full-electric to plug into public charging. In fact, since their electric range is even smaller than a Spark's, they need to plug in more often in order to save the air quality, etc. Remember that Volts have 40-ish miles of all-electric range, no 80.

The only problem I have with any vehicle parked at/blocking a public charging spot is if it is not charging (that could mean not plugged in, and it could mean fully charged).

In three years of driving a Spark EV, I have yet to see a PHEV plugged into a DCFC. Could it be they can only use an L1 or L2 EVSE? If so, what is the gripe for pure EVs? I suggest the OP log onto Electrify America and review what is being done to provide more public access to L2 EVSE charging at work and at home. There is also a plan for many more DCFC locations.

I completely agree with SparkE's comments. For me personally, and if I did not like my Spark EVs so much, I would run to purchase a 2018 Chevy Volt or similar PHEV with a 50+ mile electric range. But, realistically, I do not need one. I purchased my Spark EVs for one major purpose - to significantly reduce my gasoline and vehicle maintenance expenses. It worked! 85-90% of the driving my wife and I do is within the one-charge range of any of our three Spark EVs.

With respect to L2 EVSE access, I have both L1 and L2 EVSEs in my garage. My hometown, Manteca, CA, has exactly 1 L2-EVSE and that is provided by Tesla. If we need to travel distances that would require too many charging stops or there are insufficient or no charging locations along our route, we take our pickup truck or we can rent an ICE for the trip.

One last note. When I use a 50 kWh EVgo DCFC to charge my Spark EV, I can charge from 35% to 95% in 13 to 15 minutes and be gone. So, unless I am very desperate, I rarely use a public L2 EVSE because it takes too long - 1 hour for 15 miles of added range.

 

[TheLondonBroiler]

This is not gonna cut it, so I am out when these leases are up.

Spark is a fun car, but all good things must come to an end.

Good luck CSW. My life with a Spark is just beginning (3,500 miles in 2 months so far) and it's looking good. I hope you end up with something that suits your needs, hopefully a PHEV or Hybrid.

 

[CSW]

Update:

We will be buying our blue 2015 spark when the lease is over if they offer it for a decent price.
The wife likes it and it works well for the 50-mile round trip commute ........

and we don't have to deal with any maddening public charger garbage with that commute.
The car won't really be used for anything else other than commuting.

Spark is just too good to give up.....

 

[CSW]

" In three years of driving a Spark EV, I have yet to see a PHEV plugged into a DCFC. Could it be they can only use an L1 or L2 EVSE? If so, what is the gripe for pure EVs? I suggest the OP log onto Electrify America and review what is being done to provide more public access to L2 EVSE charging at work and at home. There is also a plan for many more DCFC locations. "

I did not mean plugged in, I meant parked in DCFC spaces and not charging, just parked there blocking the spot. Maddening!
And I have seen this at least 5 times with my own eyeballs..... imagine how often it happens if I have seen it 5 times..... and I don't get out that much.

 

[Redpoint5]

I did not mean plugged in, I meant parked in DCFC spaces and not charging, just parked there blocking the spot.

I must admit that I have never used a public charger and intend to never do so, but usually when I see an EV spot taken by someone not charging, it's because all the other spots have been taken. I can't fault anyone for taking a spot if the others are full.

The problem of ICEd spots can largely be solved if they put EV charging stalls at the farthest end of the lot, so that people have to really want the charge vs a convenient parking spot.

 

[Chris101]

The problem of ICEd spots can largely be solved if they put EV charging stalls at the farthest end of the lot, so that people have to really want the charge vs a convenient parking spot.

It's probably not as easy in most cases to put a charging parking area the farthest away... think about this for a moment... the logistics of getting electricity to that spot, how much has to be ripped up to do so? How close or far away is it to an electric source?