New Gravity “Charging Tree” Design Invokes Lynchings: Proves Yet Again US Needs EV Sockets

Recently I pointed out that US charging station cable theft has been a growing problem for years.

And core to that story is the simple analysis that cables are unnecessary for charging stations. EV owners should bring their own cables to plug into a socket.

Note the outlet in an original Mennekes design used in the EU. The US ignores this far superior design, even though basically every other electrical device always brings its own cable and uses a socket.

A new Gravity announcement proves the problem, with a design that illustrates tone-deafness on multiple levels.

Tree? A lynching tree maybe. Looks like a haunting gallows design to me.

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama, 1 Sept 1868 Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor. The KKK threatened that March 4, 1869 — first day of rule by avowed racist Horatio Seymour — would bring lynchings of white Americans (“scalawags” and “carpetbaggers”). Instead the Presidency was won in a landslide by Civil War hero and civil rights pioneer Ulysses S. Grant)

They are asking cities to pour even more money down the mounted cable mindset, and not even addressing a rising decade of threats, let alone the historical significance of promoting a “hanging tree” design from the 1830s.

Source: Virginia Archives. “Strange fruit” isn’t an unknown or obscure reference in America. I’m curious how long the Yale educated designer assumed “lynching tree” symbolism could go unmentioned. I mean Jan 6 wasn’t that long ago.

Notably the rather cruel Gravity illustration shows their new pole is to be injected into sidewalks to further reduce pedestrian space.

Bad idea for cities.

While some might be impressed the huge long cable is dangling up high, making it harder to cut, that’s also why it brings a much higher (no pun intended) cost to replace amd repair. And because it’s a much longer cable, it’s even more likely to be targeted.

The company could have just mounted sockets in existing utility poles.

Tesla talks nonsense about branded, proprietary, competitive charging… while the EU quietly and professionally deploys 99% more infrastructure with better designs.

Sockets in existing poles just make so much more sense, instead of adding more poles and creating extra sidewalk hazards, which reduce pedestrian space and probably just end up with cut power cables anyway.

The US devalues pedestrian pathways of those who live in a space by installing hazards that benefit others who live far away or only rapidly pass through. Even the most simple and obvious thought is usually missing from pole deployments. There should be fewer of these not more.

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