Miles O’Brien:
We learned firsthand the scarcity of reliable charging in this country.
At our shoot in Santa Barbara, we plugged in outside the building. Eight hours later, we came back, and this “level two charger” — quote, unquote — gave us all of 11 miles of range per hour, 11 miles per hour. So all we added over the course of a whole day was 88 miles.
We drove up the coast to Pismo Beach, where one of my E.V. travel apps promised a fast charger. Third time’s the charm, right? I have tried two cards now. Three cards. Here’s a fourth card. Oh, maybe? No. It’s just not working.
After our Pismo Beach failure, we aim for a fast charger in Paso Robles. We rolled in at 8:40 p.m.
Got 35 miles to go on range. And, hopefully, this is going to work. I’ll tell you, these are hard to maneuver on the one arm. All right. We’re plugged in.
Ah, processing error. Holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Oh (EXPLETIVE DELETED) damn, no, no, no, please, please, please. Oh, maybe we slide it in. Ah, OK. We are actually now officially charging.
We were charging fast at last. We went to dinner and came back 90 minutes later.
All right, here’s the verdict. It was full. Charging time was an hour and 12 minutes. Wow. That was 58 bucks, I guess cheaper the gas, but 58 bucks is 58 bucks, right? All right. Well, we’re tanked up, so to speak.
The next morning, we set out for another shoot in Modesto, 190 miles away. We had more than 290 miles of indicated range. So I figured we were as good as there.
Maybe I was going a little too fast. We had the radio going and the climate, the whole deal. And we watched the anticipated range in our destination dropped from about 60 to 30 to 25. And once it got to that point, the car pretty much is making us stop.
We stopped at Los Banos. Again, we found an inoperative charger.
Reconnect? What’s going on here. Ready. Please unplug. Ah, man. Let me try this other one. All right, pop this in here. Payment authorized, and initiating charge, 110, 113, 114. It’s ramping up. All right.
So there’s a consistent problem with operating and maintaining these things. There’s no question.