This is Ruining Electric Cars

hey what's up y'all I'm Kim PhD here okay story time I don't this is a little different from the usual videos on autofocus Channel but this is why I started this channel because I have thoughts on cars and this this is the place to do it so I want to get this thought out there and I think we'll see which who agrees and see if people are on the same page as me so a couple days ago I went out to get food this was like two days ago this is what inspired this video I went to go get food and it was at this like mall plaza where there's a food place I like I pull up I park I start walking over and this lady like Flags me down hey hey can you help me with something real quick I was like uh sure yeah why not I walk over and she's pointing at an electric car in a charging spot and she says can you help me I can't figure out how to get this to charge I go oh yeah of course she saw that I pulled up in this electric car so she figured this person knows how this works so in this whole you know Mall Plaza there's like two electric car charging spots right in the corner if you parked and she was like I can't get it to work I can't get it to plug in as this lady and her son or a person that she's with younger guy and then she's trying to figure this out first things first it's a Tesla and this is a charge Point charging station she says I can't figure it out it doesn't plug in I said oh of course you need the adapter that comes in the trunk and as it comes out of my mouth I'm like that doesn't sound easy uh but do you have the adapter she said what are you talking about I uh I opened the trunk for her I get the little Tesla bag with the adapter in it from ccs to the Tesla plug I said you plug this on here and then plug it in and it should work so she said I'm sorry I don't know any of this it's my son's car the battery is low I just need to get it to charge I was like oh yeah it's totally fine it plugs in uh but it doesn't start charging because it's a charge Point charger and you need to pay and initiate it to start charging and so I'd say do you have a charge Point account as it comes out of my mouth I know the answer is no and she's she's trying to just get it to work and I say okay as long as you have tap to pay right here you don't need you don't need an account you just plug it in like you just did tap to pay with your phone and it should start so she does I hear a little beep sound the charge light turns blue I go all right you should be good that should turn green in a few seconds you should be good I walk in I go get my food I got take out because I wanted it I grabbed it and I come back out and I walk back towards my car and she's like flagging me down again I walk over there it's not working it's still blue it hasn't started yet and a little screen on the charge Point charger just says like charging not started and the car which it's a it's a model 3 that she's in it's got the screen up and it shows that it sees that it's plugged in but it just isn't getting power and at this point I'm like uh this could be one of those things where you don't really know what's wrong there's a car right next to her the other electric car charging spot and that person has crossed the wire from one side to the other and it is charging and I I kind of figured like that person might know that the other one's broken which is why they cross the wire maybe this one's broken and so I try to explain this all to her and I'm like telling her you know if you can find a Tesla Supercharger I know there's one five minutes away that'll be much faster it's Plug and Play you don't need the adapter but my point to all of this is the charging infrastructure is just as important to the electric car experience as the car itself right like try imagine explaining to your parents your grandparents or anyone who's not super Adept with technology especially that instead of going to a gas station they need to make sure they find a working charger with the right adapter and all this it might be it might take longer it might be a slower charger it might be broken like this experience and that there's been versions of this before where it's like people are like actually genuinely mad and they're like I don't think the electric car thing is for me countless examples and it keeps bringing this to light where it's like the cars are one thing and I love reviewing the cars and I keep making videos about the cars because I think they're getting so good but on the other hand it's way less sexy and interesting to make a video about the charging infrastructure or the public Chargers available or the free Chargers or the paid Chargers but they are literally half the story they're just as important as the car itself we've got a bunch of chargers in the front of our studio actually uh there's about half a dozen there's six of them now I've been in this studio building for six seven years something like that so I'm a really good tenant I'm I'm in touch with the building management and when they told me they're going to put some electric car chargers and I was like oh great yeah I have an electric car there's some plug-in hybrids I see in the parking lot there's some other electric cars it'll be great they put them in it's been about a year and those of those six one of them has completely broken and no longer has a cable not sure why one of them several of them and I'll put a little clip in this video so you can see is they're extremely finicky about exactly how you have to plug it in so not only is there an adapter on my car but then I have to twist bend the cable around just right to get the PIN to go through and for it to recognize that it's charging or not here look at this clip it see just exactly what I'm talking about so it's insane it's like if the wind blows too hard I get a notification on my phone saying your car stopped charging it's like this is the type of thing you don't want regular people to have to deal with as an early adopter I'm totally willing to go out of my way to do this stuff but my point is yeah the electric car charging experience is way behind the electric car the grid the Chargers the maintenance all the stuff it's a big question mark um so I'm hoping that this is the type of thing that gets just as much investment this is again the thing we talk about with Tesla all the time where it's like their advantage is not just the cars but the superchargers who else is going to do the whole supercharger thing will they open up superchargers to other cars but then they'll still need adapters I'm sorry this bird is distractingly gigantic over there just gonna use the zoom on this s23 Ultra to show you [Music] um anyway that's just what I had on my mind I'm curious if you guys have had similar experiences or if you know other people who have had such a bad electric car experience that they decided they were not interested in electric car I bet the the man that that woman was traveling with was completely uninterested in an electric car after that experience something to think about okay anyway more car videos coming back at you soon just wanted to share this one also as I mentioned shooting this on the s23 ultra and this borderline Eagle which I guess probably has a bad Wing is now closer than ever to me we'll see uh what happens when it gets close but let me know what you think of the quality this might be the first autofocus video in 8k all right catch you guys later

Channel: Auto Focus

Views: 2,400,683

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Id: BA2qJKU8t2k

Length: 7min 32sec (452 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 07 2023