Key takeaways:
- Brett Favaro hoped to drip charge while shopping to extend his battery capacity by a few kilometers.
- Brett Favaro got an $80 ticket for plugging his electric car into a wall outlet at Surrey’s Central City mall, where he pulled 13 cents value of electricity in one hour. The fine was later abandoned, and the ticket was lowered to an alert.
Thirteen cents price of electricity turned into a big headache and an even massive bill for a Surrey man who was hit with an $80 fine for charging his electric car at a wall outlet in the Central City mall parking lot.
Brett Favaro expected to add a few kilometers of range to his Chevy Volt when he and his daughter went shopping on Wednesday.
After finding all the charging stations either packed or out of commission, he spied an open wall socket. So he parked, plugged in, and moved into the mall. When he came back an hour later, the $80 ticket on his windshield told the offense as “using an outlet to charge car not permitted.”
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“There was no signage anywhere that said you couldn’t do it, so I was genuinely shocked because it doesn’t appear all that far-fetched to plug your vehicle into a wall outlet,” said Favaro. “It’s a parking lot. It’s an outlet facing the lot. I didn’t have any cause to think it wouldn’t be permitted, mainly because it’s allowed at numerous other places.”
After posting the ticket on social media, the firm that handles the lot on behalf of the mall, Concord Parking, rejected the fine as a “one-time courtesy” and lowered the ticket to a “caution.”
The general manager of Central City stated the mall is very supportive of electric cars and plans to improve signage in the space.
Source – cbc.ca
