Is it common to charge overnight at your hotel or other accommodation?

The trapped cable is the worst part. Mine was an EVCS unit at a hotel, the charge never started and the handle stayed locked on my Bolt. Support could only see that it was plugged in and said nobody could come out. Took about 2.5 hours to get free, and I had meetings the next morning. I won't use that network again.

The remote release only helps if the network can see your session. Mine was an FPL Evolution unit at a hotel. The cable stayed locked for 4-5 hours, and the emergency pull cable did nothing. Rivian roadside said they couldn't do anything, and FPL said they saw no active session. What finally worked was pushing down hard on the charger while pulling the cable. I'd still call the number first, but I wouldn't count on it.

I did a hotel-charger trip this year and the thing that helped most was reading the recent PlugShare check-ins for each hotel before booking. Skipped a couple that looked fine on the listing but had a string of 'not working' comments. The cable not releasing would have wrecked me too.

Mine was a different flavor of slow. On a Vegas trip in my Model Y the hotel destination chargers wouldn't go above 12A, so it was only a trickle. I never figured out whether that was the hotel's setting or a shared circuit. Did yours show the amps on the screen, or did you only find out from how little it had added by morning?

Shared circuits get worse than that. The hotel in Edmundston had 6 chargers and mine was crawling at maybe 1 kW, so it was basically pointless. I ended up finding a CCS charger the next morning just to get to Quebec. Now I ask hotels what the actual kW is, not just whether they have a charger.

Asking for the actual kW makes sense. My EV6 stayed at a hotel with 1 CCS and 2 NACS plugs, and it took about 10 hours to charge. That was fine overnight because I wasn't arriving near empty. If I had been, it would have been a problem. I'd still take that over a hotel with nothing, though.

Same experience with our e-tron on a Boston to Orlando run. The overnight hotel L2s were a few ChargePoint units, and a lot of them were free. They were slow, but I never needed a full fill because I'd already done about 90 minutes of DC stops that day. I'd call it a nice top-off, not something to build the plan on.

Price per kWh isn't the only catch. The Hilton Garden Inn I used in Colorado Springs had a $3 start fee plus a $15 preauth, and both sessions stopped right at $15 of charging. It worked out to around $0.30/kWh, which is fine, but that cap was only about 1.5 hours of charging before idle fees started. So the plug was there and the price was okay, but it still couldn't fill the car overnight.

PlugShare usually lists the connector type, and the recent check-ins tell you more than the listing does. A lot of "destination chargers" are Tesla units, so a non-Tesla car may need an adapter, and I'd ask the rental place what comes with the car. I'd also leave yourself a backup. On a short trip in my Polestar the hotel's Tesla charger just showed "charging fault / book service," so I'd want a fast charger nearby either way.

Same issue with the valet at my downtown Atlanta hotel. They said there were EV chargers but couldn't say if they were Tesla-only or ChargePoint, and the car never got plugged in. Would've been nice to just see the connector type somewhere beforehand.

This is the part that gets me. Most hotel chargers I run into are Tesla destination units, so I just assumed the NACS adapter that came for my Kia would cover them. I tried it on our Tesla mobile charger and it ran about a minute, then threw a "charging stopped" error. Now I don't count on the adapter at all, and I'd want the connector type confirmed before booking.

Same lesson for me on a wedding trip. The hotel had no charger at all and the nearest ones were 5-10 minutes away, so overnight charging there was out. Now I'd check what's near the hotel before booking.

Same boat on my last winter trip, no charger at the hotel and about 150 miles to go the next day. I tried preconditioning from the app with navigation set to the charger, but the battery didn't seem to warm up at all. I ended up leaving at 9% and getting there with 7%, which I wasn't comfortable with in the cold. It did charge at around 88 kW once I was plugged in. Next time I'll do the quick evening stop like some of you mentioned, while the battery is still warm.

Ha, the 9% to 7% part would have my wife losing it. We stayed at a rural hotel near Yosemite with no charger and rolled in around 20%, but there was a Supercharger about 2 miles away, so it was a non-issue. I'm the 'it'll be fine' person, she's the 'but what if' person, so a short hop beats cutting it close any day.