Electric car owners always have the fear of running out of charge and being stranded, owing to the lack of charging stations in remote areas. They have to plan their route and check for the availability of charging stations, when doing a long trip. With the rise in elctric vehicles on roads, the proportional rise in the number of charging stations isn’t adequate it seems. Now, a Nissan Leaf owner didn’t think he was hurting anyone by plugging his car in for just 20 minutes at a public electrical outlet. Turns out, he had to spend 15 hours in jail for it.
According to reports, Georgia resident Kaveh Kamooneh thought it was totally fine to charge his car using a 110-volt outlet outside of the middle school tennis courts one Saturday last month, where he was watching his son play.
Someone from the school, however, didn’t think it was OK, and reported about Kamooneh to the police. Chamblee Police said he couldn’t plug his car in without permission from the school. Ten days later, though, police showed up at his house and charged him with theft.
“A theft is a theft,” Sgt. Ernesto Ford of the Chamblee Police said, and that the incident “is about someone who’s taking something that’s not theirs without permission.”
Sgt. Ford told WXIA that he will arrest Kamooneh again if he stole electricity, and the fact he was driving an electric car is “irrelevant.”
Meanwhile, the Nissan leaf owner, Mr. Kamooneh estimates that he stole about 4-5 cents worth of electricity in the 20 minutes his car was plugged in, and equates it with people who plug their phones or computers into outlets in public places without paying. He stated that he is in the process of hiring a lawyer to fight the charge.
Source : Jalopnik