"Andrew" wrote in message
...
On 17/03/2020 11:14, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
Came across a car being charged in the street yesterday. H&S well taken
care of - large rubber mats covering the cable and small traffic cones
either end. Impressed. Until I looked at how it was fed. Long 13 amp
extension from the house with a big coil at the end, and a 4 way 13 amp
socket strip, with the car lead plugged into it. At least it wasn't
raining then.

House had a basement, and a light to the exterior stairs recently added
by
the shiny conduit. But no dedicated charger point.


I came across a G-whizz? being charged like this on the road next to
a mansion block in Hammersmith. A series of extension cords came down
from a first floor flat front window, to a pole at the bottom of the
steps going up to the ground floor, then across the pavement at about
6 foot high, then duck taped to a lighting pole and down to the car.

Wish I had taken a photo.


This is the problem with electric cars when you don't have your own drive
but must park at the side of street and then get power from the house.
No-one wants to park a long way from their house, wherever there happens to
be a free charging point, and then walk home from there and then walk back
when their car is fully charged.

Part of the problem is that the dedicated charging cable is usually fairly
short, so there will always need to be a trailing 3-pin socket that this
lead is plugged into, even if the long extension lead has no further
junctions until it is inside the house. I suppose one way is to put the
extension socket inside the car, with its lead and the car's charging lead
going through a crack in the window, but that's not very rainproof and
certainly not secure against theft.

The alternative is to get a very long lead with the car's charging socket
(*) on one end and the other end long enough to plug into a wall socket
inside the house, then there are no junctions out in the rain. You still
need to arrange the lead so it isn't a trip hazard if it crosses a pavement.
Even if the lead is on your own drive, you need to make sure the postman etc
doesn't trip over it.

I presume the plug on the car has a way of securing the socket on the
charging lead so it can't be maliciously unplugged. That will be a
significant problem: drunks late at night think it's "funny" to unplug cars
so they are not fully charged for their owners to use them in the morning.


(*) I use "plug" and socket" to refer to the male end (with protruding pins)
and the female end (with receptacles to accommodate those pins). The end
that is connected to the mains always needs to be a socket, to avoid
accidental contact with live pins. I once borrowed my grandpa's electric
mower which had pair of flat three-in-a-row plug-and-socket, to attach the
long cable to the short one on the mower. I unplugged it to untangle the
cable and found it was wired the wrong way round, with the live pins
exposed, so I rewired it with the socket on the mains end and the plug on
the mower end - and kept quiet about it to spare his blushes.