Miriam Hechtman and Guy Shalvi wanted to do their bit for the environment so when the time came for a new car, an electric vehicle (EV) was their first choice.
At that point they had a garage where it could be charged, and the decision was relatively easy.
But then they moved to a new apartment without garage access in leafy Darling Point, one of Sydney's most densely populated eastern suburbs only kilometres from the CBD.
They discovered the only solution was to roll out a 20 metre cable from the first floor to reach the car on the street.
"It wasn't simple because you always had to find a park outside the house, so Guy got a really long cord and we managed to get it the footpath and over the street sign," Ms Hechtman said.
"It was not ideal — [but] we only did it overnight, we knew it was safe in the sense that no-one was going to trip over anything."
The arrangement caught the eye of independent MP for Wentworth Allegra Spender, who took a photograph one day while on her morning run and posted it to social media.
Ms Spender captioned the photo "EV charging the Wentworth way" saying it highlighted the lack of public charging stations for apartment dwellers living in her electorate.
A couple of weeks later the local council put a note on the car asking them to stop.
Ms Hechtman said while the publicity generated by the tweet and Instagram posts did cause them to worry, the responses were positive.
"When I was reading all the comments it was like 'that was so creative … and that's great because there is nowhere to charge'," she laughed.
About 60 per cent of the 160,000 residents in Ms Spender's electorate live in stratas and apartments where it's still uncommon to have chargers installed.
She wants the federal government to introduce tougher emission standards to force the importation of fuel efficient cars, and the introduction of more publicly available fast chargers.
"What’s really crucial is to get the ones where you can leave your car, do your shopping — those are the chargers we need and we need about 130 of them by 2030 to get the community to uptake on EVs," she said.
The federal government last week struck a deal with the crossbench which paves the way for Labor's election promise to cut the price of electric cars to pass parliament.
EVs make up only 2 per cent of new vehicle sales across Australia, but demand is high.
The Electric Vehicle Council said 26,000 electric cars were sold in the country between January and September of this year.
A recent survey showed 78 per cent of residents in Sydney's east are considering one for their next car.
But most of those surveyed said they didn't know about public charging facilities for EVs, and almost half had nowhere to charge a car at home.
It's a similar story in Melbourne, where Port Phillip Council has recently begun a trial with start-up Kerb Charge, which has invented a personal EV charger that can be installed on the footpath.
The lack of charging points is something that Sydney councils are acutely aware has to change to get more EVs on the road — the key to significantly reducing emissions.
Randwick Council's sustainability officer Sam Kelley acknowledges the lack of public charging facilities is putting residents off making the change.
"Access to off-street charging is a real issue," he said.
Mr Kelley is hoping Randwick Council's offer of discounted EV's in partnership with a private company will add 50 to 100 EVs to eastern suburbs roads.
"EVs are a really important part of reducing emissions in the community," he said.
"We know that things like rooftop solar and all the renewables that are entering the grid is helping tackle the emissions of the electricity network — but we also know that about 20 per cent of emissions is coming from transport."
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) is funding a trial of 50 chargers installed on power poles in Sydney's east, Inner West, Ryde, Parramatta, and Northern Beaches, as well as Singleton and Lake Macquarie.
The project's leader Intellihub said there is potential for 190,000 street-side chargers in Australia — it said an estimated one in four households did not have off street parking.
The NSW government has announced a masterplan it said would make it the "easiest place to buy and use an electric vehicle" in Australia.
It includes $149 million to develop a "world-class" charging network across the state.
But chief executive of ARENA Darren Miller is not convinced the lack of charging facilities is the main thing delaying the shift from petrol cars.
In Europe there are much greater government incentives to invest in an EV, he said.
"Those other countries have EV policies that incentivise people to buy electric vehicles," he said.
"What do you need to happen first? Do you need all the chargers to be there first, or do you need vehicle availability?"
Living without charging facilities at home is a challenge Ms Hechtman and Mr Shalvi must now factor into their already busy lives.
They need to charge two or three times a week to get around without worrying about battery failure.
"So it’s definitely a hassle … you constantly have to worry about how you're going to charge," Mr Shalvi said.
All the same, there's no way they'd go back to a petrol car.
"I don't now want to go buy a car and have to put petrol in it, so even though this is a challenge I'm willing to take it on because I don't want to go backwards," Ms Hechtman said.
