One of the most frustrating aspects of electric vehicle ownership is when someone in a conventionally-powered vehicle blocks a charger either out of ignorance or malice.
In the EV community, this is known as 'ICEing' (internal combustion engine-ing) and it can come with some pretty serious consequences in certain cities (namely Berlin) around the world.
It looks like EV owners in Croatia have had enough of getting ICE'd, and decided to stage a protest against gas-powered vehicles by blocking up a busy petrol station in the city of Zagreb.
As the protesters had hoped, numerous gas-powered vehicles were held up outside the station with extremely frustrated drivers, proving their point perfectly.
Among the EVs occupying the station were a few Teslas, a handful of BMW i3s, and a raft of other popular European electric cars.
According to the organiser of the protest, Igor Kolovrat, there currently isn't any punishment for parking in a charging bay in Croatia, so road users use them as standard parking spaces.
When speaking to InsideEVs.com, Kolovrat explained that he had tried to solve the problem without conflict numerous times to no avail.
“I wrote letters and tried in various ways to point out this problem, but as combustion-engined cars rule in Croatia, my voice could not be heard. There have been several incidents at the Tesla Supercharger east of Zagreb and one of our friends from the Tesla community has been physically attacked by locals who were intoxicated and parked on a Supercharger from a pure whim.”
As you could imagine, the protest has gained quite a bit of traction on Twitter, where it has a lot of fans, but even more critics. Most have slammed the movement for being selfish — which is extremely ironic.
Two wrongs may not make a right, but something like brings attention to electric cars as a whole, which isn't a bad thing. As the amount of EVs on the road increase, the need for a bigger electric infrastructure increases and ICEing will become a thing of the past.