Don said:
There have got to be some other options for you at your condo Art . . . . other than paying $10K+ for a permanent L2 outlet for your car - I would explore those before I made a decision one way or the other
Unfortunately, I won't be in Honolulu to explore the other possibilities in person until 29 December.
Don said:
Check to see if there's a 120 volt outlet anywhere in the parking area you could use.
There is a 120 v. outlet that I used (surreptitiously) when I wanted to vacuum the carpets of my Insight. But it would not be possible to run an extension cord from this outlet to my parking stall because it would cross the parking garage driving lanes.
I know that the building developer rents several parking stalls to which an extension cord could be run from a 120 v. outlet. If one of these is or becomes available, I could rent it and then try to rent mine to someone else in hopes of offsetting the rental cost. But to do so, I would have to get permission from the condo association to use the outlet to charge my car. That won't be easy. As a condition of installing power in my parking stall, I would have been required to buy liability insurance to cover any damage that might have resulted from the use of that electrical power. They will be worried that my charging using their 120 v. outlet would potentially cause a fire for which they might be held liable, I'm sure. It's so easy for them to say, "no", when one is only one of over 700 condo owners.
The condo association would not want one owner to be using electricity paid for by all owners. They were going to require me to connect my parking stall electrical circuit to their submetering system at a cost of several thousand dollars. I would be charged $5/month to read the submeter even when I was away in Sweden for half each year. This is just crazy when considering how little electricity I would likely use.
I know that in some areas of the world, homeowners read and report their electrical usage instead of an electrical utility meter reader doing so each month. The utility company sends a meter reader out maybe once each year to insure that the homeowner is correctly reporting the electricity usage. I'm sure that a similar arrangement could be made in my case but with a meter installed in my stall rather than connected to the existing submetering system. That would cost far less, but it would be different from all other owners, so it would again be easy to say, "no".
Don said:
Don't give up on the idea of an EV until you've thoroughly explored *every* option
I'm not. I really need to be there to lobby for a reasonable solution. But by the time I get there, the one i that's available for a good price might not be available at the only dealer where a Hawaii resident can purchase an i. So I'm feeling some pressure to decide before I know my charging options. We will be in Honolulu for only 4 months, so it is unlikely that any convenient charging solution will have been implemented prior to our departure. When we return in fall, 2013, a convenient charging option might have been implemented, but will a reasonably-priced i or EV of any kind be available at that time?
I kind of like the idea of the Mitsubishi dealer meeting us at the Honolulu airport when we arrive around noon on Saturday, 29 December, driving us to a branch of our bank near the dealership that happens to be open on Saturday afternoon, buying the necessary cashier's cheque to complete an i purchase, and then driving to our condo in a new i with little idea how easy it will be to charge it. There's something about the challenge of all this that appeals to me (including being able to take advantage of the 2012 Federal tax credit for an EV purchase
