The perils of an electic car

 My friend has a new electric car. I was visiting to help with some DIY jobs around his house when we needed some fixings. “Not a problem,'' he said, “we can run down to the local hardware store, 10 min round trip max”.

We both jumped in his car. When he attempted to start the car it flashed up the message “Please unplug the charging cable before attempting to start the car”. Good point, the car obviously has a safety feature to prevent you wrenching the charging point off the wall.

My friend got out of the car to unplug the charger. After a few moments he lets out an expletive. “What’s the matter?” I enquired.

“The car app on my phone wants my password and I can’t remember it. I need the app to tell the car to stop charging.”

I no longer have a mobile phone and have been compiling a mental list of all the everyday activities that are now denied to me. For example, I can't hire a bicycle or park my car without a mobile phone, but not being able to use an electric car was a new problem to me.

“Can’t you simply unplug the cable?” I enquire.

“No, the plug is locked while it is charging. Once charging is finished the car releases the clamps and the cable can be unplugged.”

“There must be an option in the car to tell it to stop charging” I suggest helpfully.

“I’m sure there is but I’ve never used it. I always use the app on my phone but something has gone wrong with the phone and all my apps have lost their login credentials. I will need to find my password which will take me ages. Let’s try the car.”

We spend several minutes scrolling through all the options on the car dashboard. We learn that the car is 35% charged, we have just under a 100 miles range and the charging will be completed (80% charged) in 4.5 hours. But we can’t find an option to stop charging.

We find an option to set the target charge level, but the minimum charge we can set is 50%. We set this and we are now told that charging will complete in 1 hour and 20 mins!

We find another option to tell the car when we plan to make a journey. The designers of this car clearly don’t make spontaneous decisions. Anyway we decide to tell the car we want to make a journey now or at least in the next minute.

The car wants to know the day of the week for our journey. We selected Monday (today). The car wants to know the time of our journey. It is now 2:52pm. But the time can only be selected in 10 min intervals, so we have to set it to 3pm. My friend doesn’t want to wait 8 mins and so goes in search of his password.

Just after 3pm he returns with the password and announces he has instructed the car to stop charging. But the car still wont release the cable. A message helpfully appears on his phone, “unable to establish connection with car”.

What about our scheduled journey which was due to commence at 3pm. We climb back into the car and check the on board computer. It tells us we have a planned journey for Monday next week at 3pm!

“Why don’t we take my car?” I suggest helpfully. 

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