Did you hear about the Danish town where everything has to be Green?
No, neither did we - until just now.
Enter Frederiksberg Town Council, which has vetoed the installation of electric car charging stations owned by electric vehicle charging company Better Place because they are the wrong color.
According to a local law, all street furniture has to be green in color. Everything from trash cans to benches, lamp posts to parking meters, they all have to be green.
And here’s the problem. Better Place’s street-post shaped charging stations, are blue and grey in color, matching the company’s corporate color scheme.
But officials in Frederiksberg are unyielding, insisting Better Place must paint its charging points green in the town, or it will be banished from the Copenhagen suburb.
“We set these demands on city infrastructure, regardless of whether they are bicycle stands and charging stands, in order to avoid that the city becomes a big mess of colors,” Jan E. Jørgensen, chariman of Frederiksberg’s technical and environmental committee, told Urban newspaper. “Better place won’t offer customers green charging statnds because, according to them, it is not economical. They want us to look like silly bureaucrats.”
Image of Copenhagen from Google Street View
As with any argument, there’s always two sides.
“It is not possible for us to accommodate their demand,” explained Claus Melvej from Better Place to The Copenhagen Post. “Our charging stands are produced for an international rollout.”
For now, the political impasse looks to continue, with neither side willing to compromise.
If Frederiksberg absolutetly must have green charging stations, perhaps it should approach General Electric, whose charging stations come in all the colors of the rainbow.
Then again, it would probably be the wrong shade of green.
We’d like to come up with some amusing quip about how the usually liberal Denmark is seeing red over the color green, but on this occasion we’d like to offer some advice to the worldwide battery swap, battery lease and charging station firm.
You’re probably better off finding a Better Place to go.
[The Copenhagen Post]
