If you own an electric vehicle like a Tesla, you need a convenient place to charge it. Imagine living in an apartment complex that does not have an EV-charging station.

Would you buy an electric vehicle anyway, and if you did, would you complain about the lack of EV-charger when you knew that was the case all along?

Or would you find another place to charge your car?

In this story, one Tesla owner is determined to get an EV-charger in the parking garage where he lives, but the HOA president knows the whole process could’ve been quicker and less expensive if the Tesla guy had been more patient or willing to help.

Let’s read the whole story.

You need to follow the law! OK, no problem

I live in an apartment block in Europe with about 100 apartments in total.

Every year we have an election for what could be compared to an american HOA, where we elect a president and a couple of board members to manage the general expenses and daily maintenance tasks (fixing garage port, cleaning common areas, security cameras…).

While we do have a rulebook of sorts, nobody in the board has ever been too bothered by neighbors going their own way as long as there is no complaints.

This story is from the perspective of the HOA president.

I am the president of this HOA as of today, and I have had my fair share of interesting neighbors… but this one takes the cake.

He bought a fancy Tesla, which he made an effort to flash around the neighbors (kind of condescending on how useless “old cars” are, how we live in the past…).

Thing is, we don’t have a charging station in the garage, so he has to go to the gas station to fill up the battery. There was no charger when he came in, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise here.

But as soon as he got the car, he started pestering the board asking about the EV-charger (we need to keep up with the modern times, you know?).

They invited him to help them make it happen.

We repeatedly answered that it is in our plans, and that we would love to get him on board to help us, as he was the main interested person for the task. This should make the process much more efficient.

He never responded to the invitation to join and help (there is even a small payment for the board members!), and we are slammed with other higher priority tasks that have suddenly popped up (fire alarm upgrades, changing parts of the sprinklers…), so we really cannot use much time in EV charging, although we all agree that we have to get that going.

This was a pretty bold thing to do!

Suddenly, I got a phone call from an electrician reading from the law that we cannot deny a EV-charger in the garage, and that he would come the following week at our earliest convenience.

I just asked him for some time to read the law and make sure we were on the same page, and in the conversation he slipped the name of the person who had ordered the charger.

To no surprise, it was the Tesla man!

(There are others with EVs in the garage, and we have a fluent communication with them about this matter. They prefer to wait than to work on the case, which is fine by me).

Time to take a look at the rules.

So, I re-read all the laws and our internal regulations to make sure that we were following everything to the letter.

It turns out that the law forces a HOA to facilitate the infrastructure for EV charging (not the stations themselves) as long as there is not a force majeure reason against it (like economical reasons).

And our internal regulations state that changing essential infrastructure of the building needs to be done under the approval of the general assembly, which happens once a year.

I talked to our finance manager, and he argued strongly against such an expense without getting a loan to partially finance it, as it would destabilize the economy of the community.

There are several things that need to happen.

With all that, we decided to comply with the regulations fully:

1- We won’t decide on any structural changes on the building until the next general assembly

2- We need a person dedicated to following the steps of finding providers, comparing offers, and presenting them first to the board and then to the rest of the neighbors. This also includes safety measurements for the upgraded infrastructure.

3- Once we have a budget, we will find bank offers for the loan that we will have to take most likely

4- We need to hire a lawyer to update the rulebook to account for the use of chargers in the garage

It could’ve been quicker and easier if the Tesla guy had been patient.

As steps 1 and 3 are dependent on general assemblies, the process will inevitably be prolonged in time, and we know that neighbors are generally against taking up a loan that will increase their monthly costs. So he will have to fight an uphill battle for being a pain in the butt

The best part of this is that before all this happened, we were considering setting a temporary charging station for everyone (instead of the “ideal” solution of everyone being free to set their charger on their spot), that would not require a loan, and was planned to be done during 2022.

Now, we will have to ask the assembly if this is an interesting way forward, and abide by the response.

I feel bad for the EV owners, because when the Tesla guy invoked the rules the game changed and now they have to wait for all the official process instead of having a temporary, just a-ok solution while we got the rest in place.

Tesla guy really should’ve jumped at the invitation to join the board and get involved in making the EV charger happen. Then he would’ve known about the temporary solution and could’ve had his EV charger a lot quicker. I wish they’d tell him this so that he could learn from his mistake. Instead, he’ll probably think he won.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Let the Tesla owner pay for the installation.

And definitely make sure the electric bill isn’t shared.

This is a very good point.

I completely agree!

Being impatient can really cost you.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.