Prime without home charging

Charge your Prime with a portable generator. After a few complaints, pretty sure your HOA will find a 110v solution...

 

Or some portable solar panels laid out.

Doesn't California have laws having HOAs be accommodating for plug ins?

 

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The suggestion with a high probability of getting some type of endorsement from a HOA board is to propose your own billing. Show them that you will have a public-facing meter installed (they start at $39) for a guarantee that electricity usage is properly accounted for. Then, state what you will pay per kWh for use of that connection.

Since I was a HOA board member (secretary of a 92-unit association for about 5 years), I'm well aware of the inner workings & thoughts related to what you are asking for. Drawing up a solid proposal like that is your best bet.

Odds are quite good that initial reaction you encountered was simply the voice of uninformed resistance. Knowing you will be billed accordingly is likely all they really care about.

 

HOAs are tyrannies by stubborn curmudgeons, as noted by:

It wouldn't even be difficult to put a kill-a-watt or similar electricity measuring device on the outlet to get the actual usage that Kedavis would have to pay the HOA each month. My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests it would likely only be $20-$30 a month on the high end, not exactly breaking the bank.

 

Yeah, I saw that, and was wondering if their objection was defensible legally; local and state laws surpass HOA regulations.

 

Are you interested in another manufacturer other than Toyota? There are some good lease deals over at Kia:
Kia® Niro Offers & Specials - San Jose CA

 

Is it legally defensible? Probably not.

Do you want to take it to court and piss off your fellow HOA members who now have the shoulder part of the legal costs of defending the lawsuit? Good luck with that.

HOAs are great for those who like exactly what the HOA is offering and would never ever want anything to change. The status quo reigns supreme.

 

No. You are mixing up an OWNER with a BOARD MEMBER. They are very, very different.

Certain owners will loudly complain without bothering to do any research and will certainly not take any responsibility. They just expect things to be a certain way and to be paid for by someone else. It's a stereotype I saw playout on a regular basis. Thankfully, those yellers are only a small number of the overall association.

Board members have a responsibility and they look out for the association as a whole, with access to detail most owners never bother to request.

You'd be amazed how far you can get with a well thought out plan.

 

Not wanting to pontificate here, but I reeeeally wish you'd reconsider buying out the Plus Four at the end of your lease. Per your previous statements:

I can't use the federal tax credit as my income is too low.

And

For previous leases I shopped around, but last time I went with the first offer and am paying $434 a month for my 2016 Prius, including GAP coverage, 7.75% sales tax, and an anti-theft alarm, with nothing due at signing and the first month free.

With a tight budget you might want to work with longer term strategies, ie: SAVING in lieu of spending. With the low miles you are putting on the car, it should give you many, many years of problem free usage. Once you are on stable financial footing you can re-evaluate your wants vs needs. Otherwise, you will forever be making payments, payments that could be made to YOU in a few years instead of a holding company.

With rare exceptions, automobile leasing usually encourages poseurs to get a more extravagant vehicle than their means could rationally justify.

Just sayin...

 

While a car is an expense, not an investment, buying it gives one equity when it's finally time to trade it in. Those who lease or buy with the terrible loans over many years lose out. It sure feels good to have a reliable car and no car payment.

If you buy a Prime, I'll give you a Kill A Watt portable electric meter. Mail me a flattened mailing box that is pre-addressed and pre-stamped. It'll show your skeptical neighbor exactly how much electricity the car uses and how much you should repay to the assn. After you've used it, pass it along to someone else that needs it. Click on the "Start a conversation" link under my name to send me your name & address. But...really do consider buying the car at the end of the lease, or an equally good used car where you may have more negotiating power to get the price and loan terms minimized.

 

Seriously? This has got to be the dumbest reason for somebody to install a Level 2 charger. It should simply be an economic analysis for the vehicle owner - if you can recoup the cost of the L2 charger in an acceptable time frame, then install it. If not, then don't.

 

Dumb is leaving out the fact that decisions are made for multiple reasons. That is one of many.

Contributing to the bigger effort does have some value. You know all to well there are those who try to prevent that message from being spread.

 

Installing a L2 charger isn't spreading any message. For a lot less money, you can buy t-shirts that say "look at me, I'm green and drive a PHEV and you should too..." That's a message.

 

Try working directly with your electricity provider. We have reps attending our plug-in owner's group. They make requests routinely about L2 charger information & experiences. They use that for their efforts to promote installs.

Also, you completely side-stepped the actual point I was making... about electricians & manufacturers.

 

I may have missed the point. Was the point that we should buy things we don't need so that electricians and manufacturers can gain experience?

 

You could also use CHARGE mode to partially charge the car if you encounter a long downhill so it doesn’t kill your gas mileage. There are a couple of threads on this forum that discuss the various upsides and downsides to it. If you’re not sure if you’ll encounter a long downhill during a trip use PlugShare and map a trip, then use the elevation button. @john1701a even has a couple of videos about using it.

Good points, yep I get it. Not everybody’s situation is the same.




Unsupervised!

 

Why would this not kill your gas mileage? On a long downhill, your ICE would normally not be running. If you put the car in charge mode, the ICE will be running with a load on it. On a long downhill, it would be better to stay in EV mode and recharge the traction battery through regeneration. That is "free" energy to the battery.

Or, use CHARGE mode when the ICE is running for another purpose. Add more load to the ICE while it is already running.

 

True but sometimes even though the car may be in EV mode it may use EV on some downhills and then run the ICE anyways to put the charge back while in hybrid mode since I’m assuming he’ll be in hybrid mode anyways. He doesn’t have to run it till it’s full just a few seconds at a time can make a difference.


Unsupervised!

 

I'm not following you here. In EV mode on a downhill, unless the traction battery is full, any regenerated energy will go into the traction battery. Why would the ICE run?