A wedding at the town hall
Rav is attending his friend’s wedding at the local town hall
Watch Rav’s story
Watch and listen to Rav’s story in this short video, or read Rav’s story below.
Read Rav’s story

Planning ahead
Rav is an 18-year-old accountancy apprentice. He is excited to be using his new EV, as he passed his driving test recently and is giving another friend a lift for the first time.
He is keen that they are not late for the wedding, after a recent bad experience with public charging where the charging unit appeared not to be working and he had to call a helpline and wait on hold for twenty minutes. Today he has chosen to arrive an hour early at the multi-storey car park a short distance from the town hall.

Arriving at the car park
Rav has planned ahead as usual, so he already knows from his smartphone app exactly where to find the charging points in the corner of the ground floor of the car park, and has booked to use a specific one in advance
Although he does not need to use them today, he is pleasantly surprised by how clearly the signs point to the charging right from the car park entrance. Rav concentrates hard while driving to the charging spaces, as the car park feels narrow and he has not driven in a multi-story car park before.

Parking
Once he reaches the row of charging spaces, he realises that they all have plenty of marked space all the way around them, despite the pillars, and all the empty spaces have working charging units in them.
Today he chooses to reverse into his booked space so that his car’s charging socket is near to the wall-mounted charging unit, because this will still leave plenty of space between the car and the charging point to get his charging cable out of the boot.
Rav’s car socket is on the back corner of his car, so parking this way means his car socket is close to the charging unit. He sets up the charging process using the app that he downloaded onto his smartphone before he arrived.

Moving around to the charging unit
Rav pulls his lightweight wheelchair frame and wheels from the back seat across himself, taking care not to get his clean shirt dirty, and assembles the wheelchair just outside his driver’s door.
He has more space than usual to do this, because the space is wide enough for him to fully open his door. His friend, who is much taller than Rav, can also get out of the passenger-side door with plenty of space.
Rav transfers into his wheelchair easily as his car and the ground next to it are on the same level, since there is no kerb next to the space. He turns around next to the car, and wheels round to the boot to get his charging cable, taking care not to drop his smartphone from his lap.

Starting to charge
After closing the boot, he plugs the charging cable into both his car and the charging point. He can reach both sockets without changing his wheelchair’s position. Rav realises he will not have to wheel around the car with the cable on his lap this time and therefore, thankfully, not get his new suit dirty from the cable.
Rav hangs the remaining length of cable onto the hook on the side of the unit to make it easier to put away later.
I’m so pleased I can keep the cable off the ground so my new suit doesn’t get dirty


Going for coffee
Setting up the charging was so straightforward that they are in plenty of time, so Rav and his friend go for coffee in the café across the road from the town hall.
Once they have finished their coffee, and with half an hour to go before the ceremony begins, Rav sees some of his other friends start to arrive in front of the town hall. He and his friend leave the coffee shop and head over to meet them.
More case studies
Each story is made up of insights from several individuals, to share as much of our research as possible and to illustrate the impact of good and bad design on real people.

Design guidance
Take a look at our suggestions for making public EV charging more accessible