Update on electric cars

We've had plenty of feedback on the story we broke earlier in the week relating to Wellington Council's $100,000 spent on an electric car programme that resulted in an expensive staff car park.

First up, despite our own checking over the Easter Break and a service station attendant telling us that the charging station was lucky to be used once a month, two members of the public have contacted us to say that they use it to charge their electric vehicles. In fact one boasted to Radio NZ that the charging station was 'the cheapest 5 hours of parking in town!'.

There is also uncertainty surrounding who paid for the charging station.  Despite the Taxpayers' Union originally being told that ratepayers forked out for the charging station, we have now managed to assertion that Z-Energy (Shell at the time) paid for the charging station.  The obvious question now is what if anything ratepayers did get for the $100,000 spent by Wellington Council on the programme.  We're aware of:

1. car leasing - the cost per year equivalent to the price of a brand new efficient hybrid
2. a study into how people felt about the electric vehicles; and 
3. good media coverage for the Council and the Mayor.

Now that we know that the charging station would probably have been built anyway, the $100,000 spent by the Council hardly seems worth it.