Cambridge city councilors say renters and condo owners who buy electric cars are increasingly running extension cords out their windows and across sidewalks to power up their vehicles.

Cambridge can't have that - it's a menace to pedestrians, for one thing, the councilors say. But rather than try to discourage people without driveways in which to install car chargers, in a city where public chargers are still fairly rare, councilors want city staffers to start looking at ways that renters and condo owners could power up their cars safely - like maybe with conduits under sidewalks in which to run power cords to the curb, the Cambridge Civic Journal alerts us.

In a formal request to the city manager today, four councilors ask him and other city staffers, including the city electrician to take a look at ways around the problem: