Going nowhere when you just can’t get a plug

I happened to be in Westport last week, and found a free space next to a public electric car recharge point in a convenient location near to my hotel, ideal to leave the car I was driving charge up overnight. Frustratingly, the recharge unit wasn’t operational, for no obvious reason.

Thankfully, my car was the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, a plug-in hybrid, so I still had its petrol engine to fall back on. In ...