week 10: Installing a charging point shouldn’t be this hard
Enviado: 25 ago 2011, 14:02
week 10: Installing a charging point shouldn’t be this hard for a man of my immense fame and fortune
Robert has been struggling to arrange the installation of a charging point in his London car park
By Robert Llewellyn on June 30, 2011 10:16 AM
So yes, I’m an over-privileged poser living in a media bubble, and yes I have a garage in an exclusive Cotswold gated community and I can charge my Nissan LEAF there, and it’s all so easy for me and I’ve no idea what it’s like for people who live in the real world. At least that’s what I’ve been told many times on the lovely ‘twitters’.
Well, to add to my ridiculously cosseted lifestyle woes, I also have a garage space to park my car in London. Yes, that’s right, I have a space between a Porsche Cayenne and some sort of old Bentley, so it’s not a down at heel garage.
I want to be able to drive my Nissan LEAF into London, park it there, plug it in and go out clubbing all night with absurdly beautiful models who only love me for my massive wallet.
Side note: my breathtaking Cotswold spread is 90 miles from London, theoretically within the range of the LEAF’s 100 miles, however the first 35 miles are very hilly, not like the Rockies or anything, but you know, proper hills. That does rather give the batteries a drubbing, plus motorway driving definitely reduces the range somewhat. Thankfully it’s not a problem as I can give the LEAF boost using the fast charger at the Nissan showroom in Kidlington outside Oxford. 20 minutes, coffee, newspaper, couple of phone calls then it’s exactly 57.8 miles to my exclusive gated media bubble pied-a-terre.
When I’m in London it’s fine, plenty of time to re-charge while I go to work, because, sad to reveal, that’s what I really do when I’m ‘in town, darling’.
Another side note: I normally catch the train and I prefer that but there have been times recently when it would have been great to have the LEAF in London.
So why isn’t there a charging point on the wall next to my posh, ‘it’s alright for you’ exclusive parking space?
This is where the ‘real world’ comes crashing into my fantasy uber-celeb-caviar-fueled lifestyle. The garage belongs to the local council but the day-to-day running of the whole mansion block is by a private management group, the electricity which powers the lights is paid for by the council which comes out of the ground rent on the entire building. The private management group can clamp vehicles that aren’t meant to be there, keeping it exclusive for the over-privileged tax dodgers, but they can’t give authorisation to ‘material changes’ in the structure.
I could go on for pages. The difficulty of getting permission for an electrician to run a cable from the meter box in the service annex, through the wall and into the garage, and fitting a £20 waterproof socket makes building a nuclear power station in the grounds of Blenheim Palace look like a walk in the park.
I’ve even written letters; you remember, actual letters on paper, in an envelope with a stamp. I’ve written more e-mails than you can poke a stick at, I’ve made dozens of phone calls but still nothing. No-one has said, “No, you can’t charge your eco poser electric car in the garage,” but also they haven’t said ‘why yes, we’re trying to encourage the use of electric vehicles in London so of course you can.”
So my precious media bubble of overblown self-importance has popped and I am dropped into the real world. The one I have heard about from countless tweets such as, “I’d love an electric car but I’ve got nowhere to plug it in.”
And it’s worth remembering that I’m having this trouble in a car park off the street, I’m not trying to install a kerb side charge post, or even one in a shared car park in a black of flats. It’s not easy; I now accept that. It is still a big hurdle.
I know it will get better and I know it’s down to fools like me to make a fuss and show that it can be done and that it is worth it but blimey, it’s really time-consuming.
However, I will not give up, I will continue to pester, wrangle and moan, I will continue to ring and ring the estate office only to find Denise, who I’ve e-mailed, snail-mailed and begged is yet again “out at lunch, but I’ll tell her you rang and she’ll call you back this afternoon.” She never does.
And just in case you think I should say, “Do you know who I am?” just pause for moment and imagine you’re working in an estate office, dealing with the genuine concerns of families on low incomes, old people whose taps are leaking, burglaries, street safety when some scruffy old bloke starts throwing his name around like it means something, I’d tell him to sling his tragic old hook, and no messing."
Em: http://www.thechargingpoint.com/opinion ... rtune.html
Robert has been struggling to arrange the installation of a charging point in his London car park
By Robert Llewellyn on June 30, 2011 10:16 AM
So yes, I’m an over-privileged poser living in a media bubble, and yes I have a garage in an exclusive Cotswold gated community and I can charge my Nissan LEAF there, and it’s all so easy for me and I’ve no idea what it’s like for people who live in the real world. At least that’s what I’ve been told many times on the lovely ‘twitters’.
Well, to add to my ridiculously cosseted lifestyle woes, I also have a garage space to park my car in London. Yes, that’s right, I have a space between a Porsche Cayenne and some sort of old Bentley, so it’s not a down at heel garage.
I want to be able to drive my Nissan LEAF into London, park it there, plug it in and go out clubbing all night with absurdly beautiful models who only love me for my massive wallet.
Side note: my breathtaking Cotswold spread is 90 miles from London, theoretically within the range of the LEAF’s 100 miles, however the first 35 miles are very hilly, not like the Rockies or anything, but you know, proper hills. That does rather give the batteries a drubbing, plus motorway driving definitely reduces the range somewhat. Thankfully it’s not a problem as I can give the LEAF boost using the fast charger at the Nissan showroom in Kidlington outside Oxford. 20 minutes, coffee, newspaper, couple of phone calls then it’s exactly 57.8 miles to my exclusive gated media bubble pied-a-terre.
When I’m in London it’s fine, plenty of time to re-charge while I go to work, because, sad to reveal, that’s what I really do when I’m ‘in town, darling’.
Another side note: I normally catch the train and I prefer that but there have been times recently when it would have been great to have the LEAF in London.
So why isn’t there a charging point on the wall next to my posh, ‘it’s alright for you’ exclusive parking space?
This is where the ‘real world’ comes crashing into my fantasy uber-celeb-caviar-fueled lifestyle. The garage belongs to the local council but the day-to-day running of the whole mansion block is by a private management group, the electricity which powers the lights is paid for by the council which comes out of the ground rent on the entire building. The private management group can clamp vehicles that aren’t meant to be there, keeping it exclusive for the over-privileged tax dodgers, but they can’t give authorisation to ‘material changes’ in the structure.
I could go on for pages. The difficulty of getting permission for an electrician to run a cable from the meter box in the service annex, through the wall and into the garage, and fitting a £20 waterproof socket makes building a nuclear power station in the grounds of Blenheim Palace look like a walk in the park.
I’ve even written letters; you remember, actual letters on paper, in an envelope with a stamp. I’ve written more e-mails than you can poke a stick at, I’ve made dozens of phone calls but still nothing. No-one has said, “No, you can’t charge your eco poser electric car in the garage,” but also they haven’t said ‘why yes, we’re trying to encourage the use of electric vehicles in London so of course you can.”
So my precious media bubble of overblown self-importance has popped and I am dropped into the real world. The one I have heard about from countless tweets such as, “I’d love an electric car but I’ve got nowhere to plug it in.”
And it’s worth remembering that I’m having this trouble in a car park off the street, I’m not trying to install a kerb side charge post, or even one in a shared car park in a black of flats. It’s not easy; I now accept that. It is still a big hurdle.
I know it will get better and I know it’s down to fools like me to make a fuss and show that it can be done and that it is worth it but blimey, it’s really time-consuming.
However, I will not give up, I will continue to pester, wrangle and moan, I will continue to ring and ring the estate office only to find Denise, who I’ve e-mailed, snail-mailed and begged is yet again “out at lunch, but I’ll tell her you rang and she’ll call you back this afternoon.” She never does.
And just in case you think I should say, “Do you know who I am?” just pause for moment and imagine you’re working in an estate office, dealing with the genuine concerns of families on low incomes, old people whose taps are leaking, burglaries, street safety when some scruffy old bloke starts throwing his name around like it means something, I’d tell him to sling his tragic old hook, and no messing."
Em: http://www.thechargingpoint.com/opinion ... rtune.html