US energy secretary admits staffer “Iced” charging bay so she didn’t have to wait

The US secretary of energy has admitted that one of her staffers deliberately “Iced”, or hogged, an EV charging bay so that she didn’t have to wait to charge when she and an entourage embarked on an electric vehicle road trip in June.

The admission by Jennifer Granholm came in a hearing late last week before the House Science Committee.

“Is it true that one of your staffers, in a gas powered (vehicle), parked in an electric charging spot, and reserved the position for you so you were not deterred from your travels,” asked one Florida representative, referring to an incident outside a WalMart in Grovetown, Georgia.

“It was poor judgement on the part of the team,” Granholm said. “It’s not going to happen again.”

The incident occurred in June, when Granholm decided to do a four-day trip from Carolina to Tennessee promoting green energy and electric vehicles,  but – reportedly – because the Biden administration is not close to Tesla or its CEO Elon Musk, decided to use the non-Tesla charging infrastructure of Electrify America.

And it seems the problems with non-Tesla charging infrastructure are as bad in the US as it is in Australia, and other countries, with reports of multiple charging stations not working and out of action for a number of reasons. The Biden administration has pledged $US100 million to ensure these EV stations – often publicly funded – get fixed.

The issue in Australia is equally bad, but many of the government-funded EV fast-charging stations do not even have reliability standards imposed. One user this week said EV charging networks in parts of the country are “not fit for purpose.”

The actions of Granholm’s staff so outraged one family that they rang 911 and called the police.

“There’s literally a nonelectric car that is taking up the space, who said they’re holding the space to somebody else, and it’s holding up a whole bunch of people who need to charge their cars,” a furious woman told a 911 operator, according to the Augusta Press.

According to an NPR reporter who was travelling with Granholm’s group, one of the chargers at the Grovetown facility was broken and others were occupied, hence the decision to send a fossil car ahead to hog one of the spots.

But the actions also prompted the usual push-back from conservatives, saying the the EV and charging technology is not ready for mass deployment, and that it will be impossible to solve the problems quick enough to allow for a rapid transition to electric.

Granholm, a former governor of Michigan, owns a Ford Mustang Mach-e – her family recently upgraded from a Chevy Bolt – and the entourage on this trip included a Ford F-150 Lightning and a Cadillac Lyriq.

Note: Ice-ing is a term used to describe the act of a driver of a petrol or diesel car parking in an EV charging bay, preventing its use. In some Australia states the action is subject to fines of several thousand dollars.