Sparks f ly as driver parks his electric car ... in f lats stairwell!
DRIVING an electric car may be good for the environment – but how do you charge it up if you live in a second-floor flat?
That was the question for photographer Adam Warner when he borrowed a Renault Twizy.
Fortunately the £7,000 vehicle’s compact dimensions gave him inspiration – if it could fit into the communal hallway of his block of flats, why not charge it from the plug socket there? So the 25-year-old parked the two-seater against the wall with a note apologising for his ‘bad parking’.
But an anonymous neighbour did not take too kindly to the enterprising solution, scrawling a message in response that criticised him for running up the building’s shared electricity bill.
Mr Warner, from Walton-onThames in Surrey, had borrowed the Renault for a week.
Classed as quadricycles, the vehicles, with a top speed of 45mph, have a maximum range of 50 miles on a full battery. They take about three-and-a-half hours to charge from a conventional socket.
Needing to recharge, Mr Warner drove it through the double doors to his building and plugged it in.
He left a note which read: ‘Hey neighbours! Apologies for the bad parking! It’s only temporary. Your friends in flat 16.’
But when he returned he found the words ‘your friends’ had been torn off and someone had added: ‘…and wait for our service charge to go up in price… NO THANKS.’
So Mr Warner left another note, reading: ‘Hey upset neighbour! I have attached a 20 pence coin, which should compensate you for your electricity cost. Happy days! Thanks. PS. Don’t unplug my car.’
He stuck the 20p coin to the bottom of the note and when he came back the next day, the money had been taken. Mr Warner said his friends, had found the note ‘really funny’. He said: ‘It costs about £1 per time to charge it up and there are four flats in my block so I put 20p on the note. We got a £300 rebate on our service charge last year so there is no chance that we will end up paying more. I have no idea why they were so bothered by it.
‘I would have thought if anyone would have got annoyed about it, it would have been about the car being on the entrance.’