Kingussie shock for electric car couple
A heroic battery electric car charge around Britain in support of soldiers ground to a juddering halt earlier this week – because Kingussie was out of juice.
The incident has sparked a debate over the strath’s green credentials and left travellers wondering if the Highland Council has its wires crossed.
The council has assured the "Strathy" it is fully switched on to the problem.
Brian and Jean Orr, from Wokingham in Berkshire, are championing the cause on their little charger as they make their way around England and Scotland to raise funds for the Help for Heroes Charity.
Mr Orr said: "When we made our scheduled stop in Kingussie on Saturday the trip came to a very abrupt stop at the Duke Street car park."
They are traveling in a tiny "city car", the Mitsubishi iMiev BEV, which only has a range of about 60 miles, so they are very careful to make sure every stop is a good one.
Just a fortnight before their trip they were pleased to discover that the Highland Council had installed a number of Rapid Chargers and that new routes had become available to BEVs.
Mr Orr admitted: "Before leaving home we were astounded to learn that due to a bureaucratic error the Rapid Chargers specified by Transport Scotland had been substituted for a much lower-performance charger.
"This meant we would have to wait three hours parked in a bleak car park – but it still seemed an acceptable option to us."
But by the time they got the Badenoch they were having to coast, arriving with just four miles range remaining – then they found out their vital lifeline had been switched off.
The air turned "blue", the couple said, when they realised they were stranded with not enough energy remaining to go forwards, or back.
"We used some of the remaining energy to tour Kingussie" said Brian, "looking for any industrial premises that might have suitable power outlets. With less that one mile range remaining the pulled over at the Duke of Gordon Hotel and threw themselves on the mercy of the duty manager."
Although the staff at the Duke of Gordon had never seen an electric car before they responded immediately to the crisis and made a suitable power outlet available.
"They didn’t have a dedicated power outlet for BEVs," said Mr Orr, "but they did have a suitable waterproof socket in the car park, which would charge the car slowly – very slowly.
"It took five hours to raise the meter close to maximum and then we were on their way – at 11.30pm."
Duke of Gordon Hotel spokesman Paul Brown said: "It was ridiculous: crazy that we didn’t even know there was a power point in this town. There’s been no fanfare about it and, frankly, since the thing doesn’t work anyway I’m not very surprised.
"It was embarrassing for the town, but at least we got the couple up and running again."
A Highland Council spokesperson said: "We were informed of the problem on Monday. An electrician from the installation company has attended the site and confirmed the main RCD had tripped. This has been reset and the site is now operational.
"The site has been fully checked and there no electrical fault has found that would have caused the RCD to trip out . . . Remote monitoring is now in place for the site through ‘Charge Your Car’ – this will ensure that any faults are reported and quickly attended to.
"It is unfortunate that the unit tripped out at this time. The manufacture and installers have confirmed this is not a normal occurrence with the most probable explanation being previous use of a wet plug.
"Our lighting team will also be carrying out regular inspections."
