The province of Ontario is all about handing out cash to encourage citizens to upgrade to electric cars. But some buyers who don’t have a garage are having to go to unusual lengths to make their electrified vehicles work. The Toronto Star recently reported that one individual is really going to unusual lengths.
Todd Anderson, the owner of a new Chevy Volt plug-in hybid received a $12,500 provincial rebate for his purchase, but without a garage or a driveway, Anderson is charging on the street by running an extension cord from the charging station on his lawn to a public parking spot across the street.
If the space is full, Anderson has to park in a no-parking zone in front of his house. So far, The Star wrote, he’s been fined $300 by the city for illegal parking. Anderson asked his Ward councillor, Paula Fletcher, to help him get approval to park in front of his house at night and to run the charging cord underneath the city-owned sidewalk, an installation he says he is happy to pay for himself.
But Fletcher says that while she’s “all about electric vehicles” and understands his frustration, there’s little she can do in the short term, as both requests would require bylaws to be rewritten. “I don’t think the city’s moving fast enough,” she said. “We should be anticipating these new developments for the environment and thinking about how to accommodate them.”
