Waiting At A Lonely EV Charger Looks Fun

You’re like a sitting duck.

A man on TikTok shared a video chronicling charging his Hyundai Ioniq 5 in a dark, empty parking lot late at night so he could make a 56-mile drive and it’s since blown up. Josh Lekach of the Wrong Opinion podcast thankfully shared the video to Twitter so we don’t have to venture onto TikTok and let the CCP track our every keystroke.

Learn more about problems charging EVs here.

The reason why this man, who goes by Crazypostman on TikTok, had to unexpectedly charge his Hyundai EV was that he had “a little surprise trip.” See, despite what electric car advocates claim, not everyone drives the same predictable route and distance every day of their life. Sometimes emergencies and other unforeseen events crop up. With a gas-powered car you can take it in stride, stopping to fill up the tank in under 5 minutes. But with an EV, well things get a little more interesting.

As the guy explains in the video, even though he’s only 56 miles from home, his Hyundai says the battery has enough charge to drive 45 miles. Since there aren’t charging stations all over the place, he has to be strategic and so stops at a station in a dark parking lot where there doesn’t seem to be anyone else.

Many security experts will tell you sitting in a parked car makes you very vulnerable to attack. The same thing is true when you’re standing around your parked vehicle. And when nobody is around to help or call 911, you’re a sitting duck for sure. This guy doesn’t seem to process that fact but sirens and red lights started going off in our heads immediately.

This poor guy thought he would only need to sit at the charger for about 10 minutes to get enough juice to be on his way. As we see happen over and over, that wasn’t the case. First of all, 10 minutes is over twice what it would take you to top off the tank of an ICE vehicle, so that’s already not super convenient. But the guy realizes his battery is colder than he thought so it took longer to charge than anticipated. When was the last time pumping gas took significantly longer because your tank was too cold?

After 16 minutes of charging the guy literally pulled the plug. The guy made it home about an hour later and had 22% of the battery charge left, so something was off on that estimate. What a fiasco.

Believe it or not, this experience could’ve been even worse. After all, we’ve seen plenty of EV owners complaining that chargers are down often because of software problems, so he’s lucky the charger was working. And he could’ve been mugged or worse by an opportunistic criminal. So even though the experience was pretty bad, as the EV push continues we could all be running these sorts of risks. Sounds fun.

Images via Hyundai