Category: Car

Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

I’ve heard back from my contact at Blue Point regarding the defunct electric car chargers. On 4th of August I was assured by Berkeley’s “Head of Estates” that matters were going to be soon resolved, and that a quick trip through Legal would see it all sorted. The ball is still in Berkeley’s court, and appears to have been left to lie. Because Brexit. Or Trump. Or the wrong sort of rain. Or something.

It is now 280 days since we first lodged a formal report of these units being dead, and I know they were dead for at least 6 months prior to that. That is 9 months and 6 days. Had the date of our first formal contact been the date of an imagined conception, then mother and child would now be safely at home and posting cute pictures to Facebook. I do hope that these units can be repaired before this imagined child is taking it’s first steps, or indeed entering school.

I am left with the inescapable and pervasive sense that Berkeley group would prefer to appear to be taking action on community facilities and environmentally sound improvements rather than actually taking action.

Feeling blue

It has been said somewhere… and therein lies the state of the art when writing something that sounds profound on the Internet in the first half of the 21st century. Somewhere or other I read, unattributed, or with forgotten attribution, something vaguely like what I’m about to repeat without attribution: Greater London as a city does not really exist, instead it is dozens and dozens of small villages that have expanded until they have grown into each other.

Continue reading “Feeling blue”

While they waited and listened in awe…

Erect and sublime, for one moment of time,
In the next, that wild figure they saw
(As if stung by a spasm) plunge into a chasm,
While they waited and listened in awe.

Benighted PodPoint Gill-Hank is now standing proudly and boldly erect!

Yes indeed, workers from Berkeley were out over the last few days hauling the corpse upright and repairing the pavement to keep it that way. Not, of course, that the unit actually functions.

When quizzed by Delia, the workers told her they had been instructed by Berkeley to make it look better…

Why Electric?

Ten reasons why having virtually all vehicles on London roads would be an outstanding idea:

1. You could walk down Oxford Street or Regent Street without needing an oxygen mask;

2. Birds would stop falling out of the sky, asphyxiated, when they crossed the M25;

3. It would be quiet enough to hear the sweet song of birds, or at least the raucous yelling of seagulls;

4. Everyone would be able to hear the music they are playing in their cars, instead of it being drowned by the engine noise;

5. Cyclists will be able to hear you when you shout at them;

6. You will be able to hear what they cyclists are shouting at you;

7. All the other drivers will be able to hear the conversation you are having with the cyclist;

8. Watching tourists trying to scurry across the road through the traffic becomes even funnier;

9. London would insouciantly brush off rising oil prices, except in the square mile of the City;

10. Forget custom ring tones – think custom ersatz engine noises…

Gill-Hank Progress

After pestering as many as people as I could, publicly, via Twitter by posting links to my previous, I finally have somebody admitting ownership of the unit:

Dear Mr. Robert Hook,

Following your message on Twitter regarding the charge point located at Cadogan Road West, please be advised that we have been reporting this charge point as faulty to Pod Point.

Unfortunately, the charge point has still not been repaired as you have rightfully highlighted.

As a result, we have decided to remove this faulty charge point and install a brand new Source London unit. We are currently working with Berkeley (which you also mentioned in your message) to have the new charge point installed as soon as possible.

Should you have any further queries, please feel free to respond to this message.

Kind Regards,

—-
Thanks for using SourceLondon.
Your SourceLondon customer service

I have of course asked if the other two units will also be repaired or replaced, and asked for some indication of what “as soon as possible” means. I am getting a little tired of “As soon as possible”, as I’ve been hearing it for almost two months.

The Saga of Gill-Hank

Imagine, if you will, that you have arrived at a large and reasonably luxurious hotel, with a heavy bag in tow. The bag is not too much of a nuisance, it has wheels and so you can drag it along, but you sure wouldn’t want to have to carry it upstairs. You check in with reception, and head to the two lifts to go up to your 10th floor room.

Continue reading “The Saga of Gill-Hank”

PHEV Charge hassles

I’m still trying to sort out where we can charge the car – Delia has found a charging point nearby that we can use for a short period to bleed in a little bit of charge – while we wait for the PodPoint at our front door to be fixed. Which might be an indeterminate amount of time, as the PodPoint engineer came out during the week and confirmed that yes, it had been backed into, yes it was defunct, and yes they would need to embark on a complicated arrangement with Berkely, Rendall & Rittner, and Greenwich Council to get it fixed.

We just received the SourceLondon RFID card in the mail, which caused me to google off to find who on earth “Bluepointlondon” are. Which in turn led me to this article at the Financial Times.

The timeline turns out to be like this:

  • May 2011 Boris Johnson ordered TFL to build a network of charging stations across London. TFL coerced the boroughs and councils to install (at their expense) the charging stations, and Boris patted himself on the back for a job well done
  • September 2011 TFL flogged the network off to Bolloré for a total of £1 million, on the understanding that the new owners would pay for the upkeep.
  • The network falls apart because nobody is maintaining it
  • Bolloré believes it’s only supposed to reimburse anyone who makes repairs £500, but the repair costs is higher.

And so it’s a mad merry-go-round. Bolloré aren’t fixing the network they own, because as far as they are concerned it’s someone else’s problem. The manufacturers – PodPoint, Chargemaster and similar – are not maintaining the network because as far as they are concerned it’s someone else’s problem. TFL aren’t maintaining the network because they made it someone else’s problem, but are not sure whose. The councils aren’t maintaining the network because they cannot afford to. Meanwhile Boris Johnson strolls off taking credit for having built a network of charging points to take London into a green future, without actually having achieved anything that works.

Golf Clap.

Phun with PHEV

Well, that escalated quickly. We went from thinking in November/December that we needed a solution for carrying more kit around than would fit in the Panda, to driving away from Portsmouth on 11th March in a brand-new Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, paid in full (mostly from some money I had sitting in Australia, hoping the $AUD would be worth something some day).

Continue reading “Phun with PHEV”