Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm learned firsthand about the challenges that come with taking an electric vehicle on a road trip when another driver called police because her team was blocking a charger.
The incident happened during a recent four-day excursion to promote the administration's investments in green energy, according to NPR, which had a reporter riding with Granholm. The travelers had a caravan of EVs including a Cadillac Lyriq, a Chevrolet Bolt and a Ford F-150 Lightning.
Her advance team stopped at a fast-charging site in Grovetown, Ga., and discovered that one of the four chargers was broken and two were in use. So a staffer tried to hold the open charger for Granholm by parking a gasoline vehicle in that spot.
When a family arrived needing that charger, they called the sheriff's office.
Because Georgia has no law against parking a nonelectric vehicle in a spot for EV charging, deputies declined to intervene. Granholm's staffers tried to appease offended drivers by diverting their vehicles to slower chargers elsewhere, NPR reported.
Another driver showed up soon afterward in search of juice but had more patience.
"It's just par for the course," John Ryan, who was driving a BMW EV, said of the wait. "They'll get it together at some point."
Granholm, a former governor of Michigan, acknowledged the obvious lesson from that experience and others along the way at the end of the trip.
"Clearly, we need more high-speed chargers," she said, "particularly in the South."
