An apartment dweller desperately wants to purchase an electric vehicle, but is faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle common to many in his living situation.
Robert Till, who lives in a strata-managed collection of units in Brisbane, has nowhere to charge an electric vehicle in the building and even after offering to pay for a charger to be installed in the underground car park, he was knocked back by the corporate body.
The 70-year-old retiree said he needs a 10 amp – 240 volt outlet installed in his car space, but the complex’s body shop rejected the request despite offering to pay for it, a dilemma faced by millions of people may have to deal with. of Aussies living in similar situations.
Brisbane apartment dweller Robert Till is desperate to buy an electric car but is blocked by his apartment’s strata management
“I don’t agree that the corporate entity should pay for that,” Mr. Till said Yahoo News.
“I just want them to get out of the way and make the people who want it pay for it.
“To just plug in a charger would cost about $5,000, and that includes a meter.”
Mr. Till has been at war with his complex’s legal entity over this issue for three years.
The agency initially told him the building, which is 21 years old, could not be rewired for Type 2 charging, which uses seven plug pins and is faster than the five-pin Type 1 charging points.
Mr. Till said he is only asking for Type 1 charging, which can deliver 7 to 11 kilowatts over a standard 240-volt line.
He says he sought expert advice which confirmed this and that as there are few electric vehicle owners in the complex, this will not overload the building’s electrical infrastructure.
“If everyone turns on their kettle at once, that amounts to everyone trying to charge their car, and that’s a low number of kilowatt hours,” he said.
Some tier-managed apartment buildings have blocked the installation of electric vehicle charging stations
Mr. Till pointed out that under current law a corporate body cannot stop someone from owning a pet, even one as big as a house, but in car space that is considered common property, they can stop the charger .
Mr Till said he wanted Queensland to take away the rights of corporate bodies to block charging plugs.
“If they want everyone to move to an electric car, they need to take that approval process out of the corporate body and put it back into state law,” he said.
Until that happens, Mr Till is stuck with his 2011 Holden Calais.
The head of a national lobby group for apartment owners, Owner’s Corporation Network chairman Fred Tuckwell, is also pushing for a change in the law around electric vehicle charging.
He has written to state and federal governments asking that legislation ensure Australia’s 2.5 million strata owners have the right to charge their vehicles in buildings.
“I think the Victorian Government is looking at it seriously, and it’s certainly on the NSW Government’s agenda. Whether they will do something and when, I don’t know,” he said.
Recently, Mr Tuckwell also pushed for laws banning e-bike charging in apartments following a spate of fires.
Mr Tuckwell said his organization supported the introduction of e-bikes and e-scooters as low-carbon modes of transport, but wanted to ensure they were stored and charged safely.
“Don’t buy cheap junk, don’t heat them or place them in the fire exit path,” he told the ABC in January.
Victorian firefighters have said they attend an average of three to four fires every week caused by lithium batteries exploding while they are being charged.
A report from the federal watchdog the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was published last year Batteries found in e-bikes and e-scooters were significantly more likely to cause fires than electric cars and trucks.
This was due to the often low quality of the cheap means of transport which could be ‘particularly catastrophic’ due to the volatile fluid contained in the batteries.