Downtown Electric Vehicle Parking

Last Friday evening, we drove our electric car to dinner in downtown Los Gatos thinking there would be a high likelihood of being able to charge the car while we had dinner…not so fast! We have used the charging station near the Toll House prior; it’s in a bit of an odd parallel parking spot but this time we tried lots 4 and 5 which both have more than one charging station. Sadly, as you will see from the attached picture, 3 of the available 4 charging “plugs” were taken by real electric cars and the last available plug could not be accessed by the next nearby space because a gas powered car was parked there. The cord would have reached to the handicapped spot but our fear of a ticket was too great to try it. Strike 1! So off we went to lot 5; easy enough right? That lot is right across the street and we could still easily walk with our family to our dinner destination. WRONG! All 4 spaces in front of the 2 charging stations there were being used by gasoline powered cars; no, not hybrids or hybrid plug-in vehicles but cars that solely run on gasoline. I realized that relying on common courtesy when parking spaces in downtown LG are at a premium on a Friday evening is highly unlikely (sadly). One might think, that like handicapped spaces, there would be a sign saying that those spaces are reserved for electric vehicles and that all others will be towed or ticketed. Those signs don’t seem to exist. So the question I pose for the Town of Los Gatos is this: How do we keep these spaces open for cars that truly need them. My vehicle is not a hybrid plug-in and the gas engine will not take over when I run out of charge (ie. Volt, Prius) because there is no gas at all in my car. It seems like most towns and cities are looking for revenue; tickets for this type of parking would help with that. A solution to this is needed so those early adopters of new technology can rely on public charging stations.