tim's experiment

I don’t mind Elon Musk taking over a chunk of Twitter. You Twits can still go on enjoying yourselves after all. But what is he doing in the Sui Wo Estate Shopping Centre Car Park?

Six spaces are now reserved – and this is the first time I have seen one actually used – for purchasers of Mr Musk’s expensive electric chariots.

This does not look like a good business move. Sui Wo Estate was the first Home Ownership Estate built in the New Territories back in the 80s. It is quite nice as public housing erections go, but the flats are small and, of course, now old.

The shopping centre is quite basic. There is a ParknShop of the grassroots kind: 12 kinds of rice and only one of cheese. There are two convenience stores, two chain bakeries, the usual two ETC machines, Fairwood, Mannings, Japan Home Stores … you get the picture. This is not natural Tesla territory.

Also drivers of other brands may not welcome the new arrangement. The disabled space has been moved to a place even further from where a disabled person might wish to be:

The space required by the Tesla electrical infrastructure has led to another parking slot being put out of action, because otherwise a pedestrian exit is blocked whenever someone parks there.

And you are not welcome in a Tesla parking space, even if all the others are full and all the Musk boxes are empty.

I have my doubts about the threats of impounding or towing. I have never seen the slightest sign in a Hong Kong car park of any facilities for impounding, much less towing, delinquent cars. I imagine making such arrangements would be quite expensive, and also the entrance to an interesting legal maze.

Still, this arrangement seems to raise an important general issue, which is: granted that we wish to encourage electric vehicles by providing the necessary charging points, is it really a good idea for such facilities to be specific to one brand only?

After all I regularly read that every car maker in the world is concocting an electric offering, and in many cases giving up the old fossil fuel arrangement. Electric cars made in China are, according to The Economist, now competitive in quality with their Western counterparts and, I presume, much cheaper.

Clearly the present advantage of petrol cars is that you can get petrol anywhere. Petrol stations are distinctive and all the petrol on offer – despite efforts to persuade you that some brands will put a Tiger in your Tank and others will be “with you all the way” – is much the same.

As far as I know electricity has the same boring quality: Hong Kong Electric’s is much like China Light and Power’s. The only difference between the electricity supplied to different electric cars is the plug used. I would have thought it made sense to have all electric charging points generic, so that owners of electric cars may have to search for a top-up, but at least they do not have to search for a Toyota top-up, or whatever.

Well this is a commercial decision and nothing to do with me. Our government may care to encourage a more convenient arrangement or it may not bother. The success or failure of charging points is a new and fresh mystery, at least to me. The set in New Town Plaza is a roaring success and often has a queue; the set under Festival Walk is often empty. Personally I think a hybrid car makes more sense anyway.

Given the general shortage of parking spaces in Hong Kong we should all, perhaps, be pondering a new question of driving etiquette: under what circumstances, if any, is it acceptable for the driver of a petrol-powered dinosaur to park in a charging space.

Some years ago a writer in the SCMPost published a bitter denunciation of drivers (well the one driver who, when she protested, told her to lump it) who park in charging spaces they do not need. At the same time there is no requirement that the electric user should actually plug in and absorb electricity. I suppose the point of a charging facility for the mall proprietor is to make money, which can most easily be done by charging usurious rates for power. All the Tesla owners I know have a plug in their car ports. May they still use the Tesla spaces without being towed?

Petrol powered people will not doubt look at the matter differently. Car parks do not start charging you when you find a space; they start charging as soon as you drive in. Some of them have elaborate arrangements to stop new arrivals when they are full and direct the homeless to vacancies, but most of them don’t.

If the alternative is to pay $50 an hour for the pleasure of circulating in search of a space then I fear a good many drivers are going to say that Mr Musk can kiss my posterior and I am going to use one of his reserved spots.

I remember there was a time when the Smart people were pursuing the idea of special spaces reserved for their little cars. Don’t see them now, do we?