Interesting story here and one that will likely set some precedents/laws or at least force some type of decorum when it comes to charging cars.
One Saturday in November, Kaveh Kamooneh drove his Nissan Leaf to Chamblee Middle School, where his 11-year-old son was playing tennis.
Kamooneh had taken the liberty of charging the electric car with an exterior outlet at the school. Within minutes of plugging in the car, he says a Chamblee police officer appeared.
“He said that he was going to charge me with theft by taking because I was taking power, electricity from the school,” Kamooneh said.
Kamooneh says he had charged his car for 20 minutes, drawing about a nickel’s worth of juice. Don Francis of Clean Cities Atlanta, an electric vehicle advocacy group, says the estimate of 5 cents is accurate.
They compare charging a cell phone or people drinking water from a spigot but it isn’t so obviously clear. Sure, $.05 is nothing, but what if someone was drawing $10/day from an unsuspecting neighbor? What if you drove a truck full of batteries to a rest stop on the highway and took a few hundred $ worth of electricity (hypothetical, I know).
Clearly this guy should not have been jailed or fined – a warning probably should have sufficed.
But perhaps the most important part of this story is that Electric is so cheap – illustrated but the sub-$.05 of usage. Sure that’s only a few miles but hopefully that puts THIS GRAPH RIGHT HERE in people’s minds.
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You need to read the WHOLE story – the problem wasn’t the plugin, it was his attitude plus the fact that he was trespassing.
Look here:http://www.11alive.com/comments/314666/40/Electric-car-owner-charged-with-stealing-5-cents-worth-of-juice
Well, I think he probably could have been issued a warning in the first place. I agree there should be a debate and clarification on procedures.
He was given a warning and became combative with the officer, then lied to the officer and tried to blame the officer for damage to his car, which was disproven be the officer dash-cam. He got what he deserved.