To Reva or Not to Reva

I've been thinking of getting rid of a Hyundai Santro that we own. I use the car exclusively for driving to and from Work. That's a 14 km. drive each way, about 30 kms. daily for 300 days a year. The car has about 50,000 kms on it and is 4 years old. It runs about 12-13 kms, per litre of petrol so my daily commute costs (approx.) Rs. 120.

If I do sell the Santro - I'm seriously considering going in for a Reva. It's a fully Electric Car and is designed solely for In-City driving - my commute would be ideal for the car. The Reva costs about Rs. 4L ,I should get at least Rs. 2L for my car so I'll have to pony up another 2L. The Reva's operating cost is about Rs. 1 per km (as opposed to Rs. 4 per km with the Santro). So my daily savings is about Rs. 90 and on a yearly basis this would be Rs. 27,000.

That's not enough for me to get rid of the Santro just for the savings (it would take me 22.5 years to recover the additional cost at a 12.5% discount rate), but if I were to ditch the Santro anyway, buying a Reva might be worthwhile.

So what's stopping me well I can think of two reasons why Not to Reva:

1. Charging the car. I live in an apartment complex, and I don't have a designated parking spot, which means I can't charge at home. I do have a reserved parking space at work and I have enough pull (being the owner of the company) to swing a 15Amp. socket next to my parking spot. So I can charge it at work. The car needs 8 hours for a full charge, which basically means it has to be charged the whole time I'm at work. I won't be able to charge the car when I don't go to work - so what happens when I'm on vacation or its a long weekend or I'm sick etc. etc..... I need to find out if the car's battery runs down if its just sitting there. I suspect it does - in which case what is the time frame? How long can I keep the car idle before I MUST charge it again.
2. There's no dealership in Mumbai - which means I need to order the car sight unseeen... ummmm... I don't think so.

So for now I'm not going to buy a Reva. But I'm also not going to ditch my Santro just yet. I'll be keeping tabs on when/if Reva opens a dealership here, then I might just go all green.