@Whale said:
Scott13 – I can’t see electric motor vehicles becoming a cost-effective proposition any time soon…
Huh?! I’ve been happily driving my DIY-converted electric car for almost 6 years. For the last 18 months we have had a commercial electric car as well. The cost to run the cars is less than any petrol car available. Maintenance is less also. The ex-demo Mitsubishi iMiEV, virtually new, cost $24K. Now you can buy the ones that have come back from 3 year lease with low milage for about $16-17K.
Electric vehicle charging will be an issue for strata properties soon enough. I was lucky that a neighbour with his unit close to our shared parking space was happy to let me charge on a line from his unit. We have a subsidiary meter in his meter box so we can both see what I have added to his bill. Every six months I give him a few hundred dollars to cover the fuel cost of all our city driving.
Meanwhile, we have another power point on the OC’s circuit next to an unallocated parking spot. We pointed it out to all residents in a newsletter as a handy facility for unit owners so they would go there to vacuum out their cars rather than driving across the grass to get close to their units. The amount of power that anyone could take is trivial unless they were plugged in for hours day after day. An inappropriate use such as routinely charging an electric car would soon become obvious.
Peter.