Piss Poor Charging Station Design Is Getting EV Drivers Ticketed

Last Updated on: 26th July 2025, 02:24 am

Recently, Kevin Williams at Inside EVs got an unwelcome present from the city of Ferndale, Michigan: a parking ticket. His great crime? Backing into a parking space instead of parking nose-in. While I disagree with this kind of law (backing in is safer and more efficient), all’s fair with warning, right? In this case, not so much, as it was posted on an EV charging space. Given that many if not most EVs have charging inlets on the back of the vehicle, you’ve basically got no choice but to back in for charging.

Instead of recognizing that this was a case of necessity (a valid legal defense for most crimes and infractions), the jobsworth police officer decided to forego intelligent use of prosecutorial discretion and write him a ticket. And, because he was too busy with work, he forgot to appeal the ticket in time and had to just pay it to avoid having a warrant out for his arrest. Worse, this is something that other EV drivers on PlugShare have complained about, so it’s not the first time this particular form of entrapment has come up in Ferndale.

The Bigger Problem Here

While I totally agree with him about the stupidity of marking an EV charging space as pull-in only, there’s a deeper problem here. Instead of intelligently designing EV charging infrastructure, most charging companies and property owners just copy Tesla, even though Tesla got this very wrong over a decade ago.

To understand why I’m questioning the judgment of the god-king Elon, I must first go through a quick review of the history of fueling vehicles. When the electric starter was invented and fossil-fueled vehicles overtook EVs in the early 20th century, there was no real fueling infrastructure for long trips. Gas vehicles were technically capable of cross-country trips, though, so people did find ways to come up with gasoline.

At first, people taking adventurous trips across the continent had to call ahead to pharmacies and make sure the pharmacist could come up with a jug of gasoline for them in advance. That way, when they got to town, they could drop in, pay for the gas, fill up, and then get to the next pre-arranged fueling site. This was obviously not ideal, and the pharmacists figured out that there was money to be made selling gasoline. So, they started by regularly stocking it for people passing through, and then started having curbside pumps.

At this point, there was a lot of freedom in gas station design. Theoretically, an aspiring pharmacist-gasman could lay out the fueling station any way he wished. Back-in and nose-in spaces to pumps were and still are theoretically possible. But, over the decades, trial and error eventually led to the common pull-through gas pump layout we see in most places today.

Instead of figuring out why gas stations are the way they are, Tesla and Elon Musk decided they wanted to reinvent the wheel (or, uh, the fueling station). Instead of pulling through next to an island under a canopy, Superchargers were placed so that people had to back in and plug in the car. To be perfectly fair, Nissan did the opposite, putting charge ports in the front of the Nissan LEAF, but planned for people to nose into parking spaces to charge and not usually charge from the side of the vehicle.

Because Tesla was successful, most other companies offering charging simply copied this design. Cars could nose in or back in, charge, and leave. Early EVs weren’t good at all for towing, and even today, there are only 2 or 3 models most people would feel comfortable using for cross-country towing. So, the construction of spaces where you pull in or back in to charge continues today.

I Get Why They Do This, But It’s Time To Stop

I understand that integrating EV charging into existing parking lots is made easier by this approach. If you can just add EV charging infrastructure to existing parking spaces, you save a lot of money and open up your options of host businesses to deal with. Opening up a charging station next to existing amenities means you don’t need to build a convenience store, bathrooms, and other expensive things for the needs of the driver and passengers.

That having been said, the EV industry has come a long way since 2010–2014. Instead of a small cult-like customer base, EV companies are starting to break into the wider market. EVs are available in all shapes and sizes, from small commuter cars to half-ton pickup trucks to medium- and heavy-duty vehicles that carry dozens of tons of important cargo. Home and equipment yard charging can still handle most non-over-the-road needs, and rapid charging has become something that’s mostly for people who drive more than a battery’s worth of miles in a day.

The limits of the parking lot approach to charging station layout are starting to catch up with us. The few people now using electric pickups to tow trailers long distances are finding that unhooking and rehooking a trailer at every charging stop is a huge pain in the ass, especially for those using weight distribution hitches. Add extreme cold or 100-degree humid days, and it becomes a form of torture we don’t even impose on enemy combatants or those in Trump’s camps.

The time for haphazard station planning — where saving a buck and making the station fit in somewhere rules over usefulness — is over. There are still plenty of places that can use that kind of parking lot charging, especially for those who can’t charge at home. But we need at least as many well thought out stations designed from the ground up to serve everyone going down a highway now.

These stations need slots for small, light-duty passenger vehicles, but they also need places to charge tow vehicles without unhitching. They also need space and cable length for EVs with charging ports on any part of the vehicle. Having a megawatt charger or two for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles is also extremely important.

But, this truth can be narrowed down to one sentence: Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance (the six Ps). Planning for yesterday’s charging needs won’t cut it. Planning for all of today’s needs and a few years’ worth of tomorrows is what needs to happen. But, for now, we still have charging companies and site hosts who are so inattentive and lazy that they’re setting up EV drivers for tickets. So, I wouldn’t hold my breath on smarter things happening just yet.

Featured image: charging an EV with a trailer at the Circle K in Boone, North Carolina. Photo by Jennifer Sensiba.

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