mergeconflict401 === [00:00:00] James: Welcome back everyone to Merge Conflict, your weekly developer and technology podcast. I'm about all things in the world of things. Uh, we'll do a quick update here, Frank, uh, some important breaking news. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Uh, we do have a podcast this week, but we do have to talk about. Your successful launch. [00:00:19] Frank: Yes, James. Thank you. Yes. It's a small miracle. Um, Apple allowed my app into their app store. They now have 1001 apps for the Vision OS platform. Um, feels good. Feels good. Um, and in all honesty, I've been, I've ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be like a VR AR app developer. So it is kind of fun. I'm like, Hey, cool. You know, uh, from early sales, I don't think I'm going to get quite too rich from this one. I'm only going to be medium rich, you know, that's [00:00:48] James: good. I [00:00:49] Frank: probably only afford a couple more houses, not the whole, the whole plot that I wanted. Anyway, yeah, it feels good. Uh, nine total days. That was, um, that was fun. Thanks Apple. Let's do it again. [00:01:02] James: Nine days of stress inducing terribleness. Is it one of those apps you think you're going to kind of adjust in the price? You're going to kind of ride the early adopter wave and just kind of see how it goes? [00:01:12] Frank: Yeah, yeah. Um, because we, we've spoken before on the podcast. Uh, I didn't think I was going to do upfront app charges anymore, you know, and just pay for the app. You get the app, but we're, you would convince me subscription only from now on. But like, it's early days on the platform and I'm actually happy to see that people are just Selling apps for a dollar amount. It's one of the old days of iOS. Thank you. So I'm happy to do that. Uh, but I recognize the modern world is more the freemium model. So, you know, release like a free version and upgrade to pro and it's, I'll probably be doing that kind of stuff too. [00:01:47] James: Yeah, I really wish that, um, there was a way, cause I do like the idea of this, like this app, the night vision goggles make a lot of sense to be like, Oh, here's an app. Like if you were to go, go to the store and buy night vision goggles, you would fork over a few hundred dollars. Um, and then you would, you would get them. I don't know how much night vision goggles are, but I imagine more than 13. Yeah. So, So that kind of makes sense in this realm. There's no services. You're not paying anything extra. Like here's the app. Here you go. Now, the problem is that like any paid app, you know, there's like a, not a try before you buy type of situation, right? Ideally, Apple could be like, Hey, let me get a 30 day free trial, a 60 day free trial. But what you would have to do is make it free. And then you would have to. Like charge after like, you get, you get 30 minutes of use. Like there's an app, the other cadence, there's another cadence app on the app. And I think it's just called cadence or something like that. And mine's called my cadence. So it's more personal. Now they have the restriction, which is the app is free. My app is also free, but. You can only use it for five minutes and then you have to pay 9 to unlock unlimited time. My whole thing was it's a fair model. It's a fair model. See if it works. I mean, I like that model because if it doesn't work with your sensor, all this stuff, boom, you're good to go. Unlike having to buy it up front. And then if it doesn't work with your sensor or something like that, then you're like, Oh, I want my refund. Got it through. It's a one star review process where mine was is free. Everything's free. But if you want all these extra features, blah, blah, blah. Boom. There you go. You know, depending on what people want, it's good to go. Or this, the only way for you to implement it would be, Hey, you could use it. You'd have to have a clock in there. You get, you got 20 minutes of time. You can, you could buy a night vision tokens and then you could redeem those tokens for night vision credit hours in the app that feels just dirty and wrong. Mostly. Yeah. So like when [00:03:46] Frank: you're in the darkest, scariest part of the forest, I just turn it off. Just like, good luck, buddy. Uh, you got this. There's definitely not a bush in front of you and definitely not a cliff off to your side. Um, give me my money. Uh, I, I prefer the simple model. I've always preferred it. It's harder in the long run. Obviously you have to constantly be, uh, getting new users and it's harder. Uh, whereas with the subscription, at least you can build up user base. Uh, but you know, it's so much fun to implement freemium. Like it's gotten easier. I'll admit it's gotten easier in apps, but it's still not fun. It's at least three UIs that you have to build and test in the app. [00:04:24] James: Yeah. Now I do think if you came out with a night vision pro version, right, you have the night vision version and then you have a night vision pro version. Now the pro version, you could have a bunch of different colors and you could have like different scan lines, you know, like filters, like on your, it's like. Do you go into like snake mode, like Metal Gear Solid mode? And you know what I mean? I mean, that would be pretty neato. I don't know if that's possible. Is it only blue right now? It's like one blue and that's all you get? [00:04:49] Frank: Uh, within the app, you can change the colors. Um, but I, I should have more baked in palettes. Yeah. I, I should use my creative skills, but I'm like, at least I give the user control. If you don't like my blue purple world that I love, I love my blue purple world. But, um, if you want a yellow. We're all crazy, uh, you can go do that. [00:05:10] James: Virtual boy world. Perfect. Yeah. [00:05:12] Frank: Um, hotdog world. Hotdog world. Yeah. [00:05:18] James: So congratulations, Frank. I'm very proud. So we'll see how. Yeah, [00:05:25] Frank: we've talked about it before. My, my goal is to release, um, a few smaller apps before I work on something big, MyCircuit3D on Vision. So that's, [00:05:34] Frank: I want to get very comfortable with the platform before I tackle a larger project. And this was a huge learning experience and it's super fun. So go buy Vision Goggles, if you don't have a Vision Pro, go buy it anyway. Can you do that? I don't think you can. Try anyway. [00:05:51] James: I, I thought you would have called it. Is it funny? Cause. The funny part is if you would have called it Vision Pro Goggles, then I bet they would have like took it down because it's like, Oh, Vision Pro is by trademark, but you now have Vision Goggles. The words are so weird. You can't say headset. [00:06:05] Frank: It's not a headset. Um, I'm surprised they allowed goggles. Um, but the problem is even though it's kind of a new app store, it's totally not a new app store. So there's still a lot of, uh, name collisions. And so coming up with those simple names, we've discussed it on the show before. I'm not into cutesy names anymore. I want the most SEO friendly. I want the name of my app to be your search terms, for whatever the app does. [00:06:31] James: If you need a timer for streaming, MyStreamDriver is it. If you need cadence, MyCadence is it. I get it, Frank. I get it. Right. All right. Here's my topic this week. Uh, I want to talk about electric vehicles and specifically I drove and rented and by renting enabled me to drive my first EV vehicle of all time. And we went several hundred miles in the EV. Uh, this is the Hyundai Iconic 5. Ooh is what I got. Ionic, iconic, ionic, ionic, iconic on, I ionic, I think it's the Ionic 'cause it's got ions, beautiful car, beautiful car. Um, it was a standard range vehicle, um, but it had all the bells and whistles about 280 miles was, I think that's standard range feels about appropriate. And um, I had the choice between the Mustang. EV, Oh, and the IONIQ 5. Yeah. And I went IONIQ because I was like, they look very similar, but I was like, I don't feel, I feel like if that's an expensive vehicle, I don't like driving expensive vehicles. You know what I mean? I know it's already an expensive vehicle, but I feel like the Mustang's expensive vehicle. Does that make sense? [00:07:47] Frank: Absolutely. But can, can we go on a quick side tangent here? We got to go on a branding side tangent. Is this the Mustang that looks absolutely nothing like a Mustang? Is it that one? That is correct. [00:07:57] James: That is correct. It looks like any other EV on the road. [00:08:01] Frank: It drives me nuts that they're using the Mustang brand name for that. Like, I don't know. I would love an electric Mustang. Make a Mustang looking car with an electric motor. It's not that difficult. Just, just take the body, put it on. But yeah, it's got, it's funny when you go to the, uh, pumps, um, every modern electric car has an electric motor. It's going to be an aesthetic and there's going to be a great name for it, but it has electric car aesthetic. And so they all kind of look the same, but Ionix is a good looking one. I think that one's a bit, I think that one's like 10 K more than mine. So it's, it's a little bit more of a car than I have. [00:08:38] James: Really nice car. Uh, lots of room in it. Um, now this is my first time experiencing my good friend, Craig Dunn. Um, Who met us? We were down in SFO. We went South down to Santa Cruz and then Carmel, stopped in Monterey along the way. And I was like, well, we're going to go a long distance, California. If I'm going to rent an EV, California gas, very expensive. So if I'm going to drive a lot, I'm going to be good to go. Now I just want to tell you the experience, everything like this. And I did get a good breakdown from Craig, which was very helpful, especially with the charging. and I learned a lot, but when you. I opened the app's like, Hey, we're going to give you a, a, this card, a gas car. And I was like, okay, I always like to look at my options. I always like to look for a hybrid. Cause I, it's always my, my jam. Yeah. And, um, then I was like, oh, EVs. I was like, I didn't even know they had EVs. This is fantastic. I guess I was like, Heather, do you want to get an EV? She's like, well, let's get an EV. I was like, this is going to be great. We're going to be so eco friendly. So eco friendly, Frank. You're [00:09:37] Frank: not about to say those words. Everyone, it's star, asterisk, [00:09:41] James: ganger. Um, when you're at a, uh, EV charge station and you hear this, Oh my God, that's going to explode. Um, so anyways, no, I get into the EV. Zero instructions. There's no instructions because when you get a rental car, a gas car and a combustion engine, uh, vehicle, um, they're pretty much all the same. You turn the thing, you do the thing, all the, all the gizmos and gadgets have essentially been standardized. And when you get a rental car, they even have it most of the time where the majority of the vehicles that you get are all the same too. So like they don't have like different, you know, NET Tower things. They're they're kind of all the same. Which is great. For someone that's renting a car. We know when you get into the EV I don't know what the hell, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I have no idea what I'm doing now. What, I don't know what I'm doing. There's so many screens in front of me. There's just like the whole thing is screens. And I was like, doddy. I'm like, how do I get car play? Do I want carplay? I think I want carplay. I do the carplay. I plug in everything. And I'm like, all right. Like, is it on? Cause again, it's silent. So I have no idea. Now here's the thing though, Frank. I'm like, okay, well, I see it's at like 99 percent or whatever. I'm like, that's good. And, but there's no information on what is this car? What kind of charger does this car have? What kind of, what, what, up to what charger, what kind of apps you need? Where do you charge it? What percentage do you need to bring it back? There's no information, zero information. Like I am an idiot. I didn't even know that there's a charger cable in the trunk until Craig was like, I bet there's a charger cable in the trunk. You could charge at your house, you know, that you're renting. I bet that will work. Blah, blah, blah. And like, sure enough, there was, there's zero information. So car rental companies don't assume that just because we're renting an EV, that we know anything about EVs, I'm like, Hmm, look at this EV, I won't get that. Boom. Um, so anyways, that's my, that's my. From app to leaving the portal. And then I leave the portal and by portal, I mean, uh, the, the rental car facility. And I asked the attendant, I said, Hey, I was just a quick question. What do I got to bring this puppy back at? Like percentage wise. Right. I know if I'm filling up gas, it's, it's gonna come back full 70%. That's the standard, huh? I didn't know I've, I've never rented one , he said, he said around 70% and I was like, around 70%. That's a wide range. Is that 60%? Is that 80% around And sure enough, it's 70% and I, and I did find an article on a third party website, not on Avis website, that said if you bring it back under 70%, they charge you $30. Wow. [00:12:23] Frank: That's actually a lot. I mean, [00:12:25] James: uh, given the price of electricity. That's, yeah, given the price. Yeah. So, um, so that's my leaving the rental car facility. And then I want to get into all the bits and pieces beyond that, Frank, but, uh, let me [00:12:36] Frank: stop here. Just let you take a breath there. Um, I gotta say, knowing whether the car is on or off is easily the hardest part of an electric car. I've had mine now for, I think, six months. I still try to put it in gear when it's not on and I try to get out while it's still on. I do, I do all the mistakes because it's subtle. Uh, mine's terrible. Mine makes like, um, a beautiful chimes, chimes. It's not a chime. I don't know. It's like a meditation. It does. Yep. That doesn't mean it's on. That's just, hello, welcome to car. You still gotta press the on button. And I find it hilarious that all the on buttons are still, um, ignition key size. Like it's that circle size. So you gotta go find that little button. And mine is on. Honestly, not in a great spot. So I'm always like trying to get to the little button. So anyway, that's my long way of saying electric cars. You can now never tell if they're on or off. I had [00:13:35] James: more problems knowing if it was off. I kept getting out of the car and then it would beep at me and it's like, Whoa, Hey, I'm still on. Hey, keys have left the vehicle. I'm trying to drive here. Yeah. It's just like, Whoa, Hey. And I was like, Oh, and I was the one time I was even trying to charge it. And it was on. It was like, Nope, I don't want that. It was very upset at me the whole time. [00:13:56] Frank: Now the charging is tricky, but I would say we're in a really, but coming from zero, I understand your confusion, but if you know anything about electric cars, you know, we're in a real plateau stage right now. We standardized on electric charging a few years back. Pretty much every car can handle the same. Pump, technically there's differences. The older ones can only handle this much power at a time. The other ones energy at a time and the other ones can handle. Uh, but the, the, the pumps, I keep calling them pumps, I'm old, uh, they adjust. We, we have computer programs that run and they're like, Hey, car, how much can you take? So it says, I'll take this much. And that's what the pump gives you. So as a consumer, you really don't have to worry about much. The one thing that they should tell you though. From a newbie's perspective is you want the DC charging, you want the fast charging. Mm-Hmm. , because I, we, we should get into this, but I just wired up the house so I can charge my car more efficiently. Cool. Nice. But that's still a very slow charge process compared to the DC fast chargers you can get at Charge America or the Tesla superchargers. [00:15:00] James: Yeah. So this is what I probably didn't, uh, re recognize and understand. I think that would've been helpful. Correct. Is they ideally would gimme some information on. Um, like what apps in the area to use? Now I did have ChargePoint and I had ev go and ChargePoint shows. You ev go locations as well, but you, you can at least tap a credit card or just sign up for the ev Go app. You gotta have all the apps. Just install every app. It's like IOTs every single app. That's what Craig told me, he is like, get every single app. It doesn't matter. Just buy 'em all. You don't wanna get stranded, get every app, , get 'em all. Now. ChargePoint seems to be everywhere. Now down in Carmel and stuff like that, there's not as many, but there are some charges around, which is good. They're all slower charges. But what I think would've been helpful. And Craig had to explain this to me was what the kilowatt charging actually meant for miles there. Now, when you plug in the car, it'll tell you an estimate of how long it'll take, but I didn't understand what it meant to plug it into like a wall socket versus a six watt. Not to mention that there are. There are charge points that are six Watts max, that if another person is charged into, it will go down to three Watts, right? Right. Fun fact, not all of them though, just some of them apparently. And then I didn't realize that there's the DC quick charge and I didn't know what the maximum charge was of this Ionic five. I did find out that it's a hundred. That's the max. That's very fast. Apparently. [00:16:25] Frank: That car is really good. That, that's one of the top, that one can handle, like most stations can't put out what that car can take in. So you were pretty safe with that car. [00:16:35] James: I also did find that out. We did get to a hundred at some point. The, we, we, we, we, I've never been there. We, we've did, we did the entire gambit. Uh, uh, Frank, we did, uh, socket charging just at the Airbnb. That was, um, you know, free. So. [00:16:51] Frank: Is that like your 120 voltage? Like a normal, normal America, Americano plug? [00:16:57] James: Americano? Outdoor plug went over, like it was street parking, so it went over a fence? Uh, you know what I mean? And, and into the, into there, I think that was charging at like two miles an hour. [00:17:09] Frank: Yeah, it's terrible. My, I think my car now, I don't let my car get down to zero, but I think it would take like four or five days on 20 volts to go from zero to a hundred percent, [00:17:20] James: but free because I'm at the Airbnb. Right now, what I also didn't recognize is that. All the charge point stations, not only have different power wattages, which means vastly different things, but there are, um, there are different prices at all of them. They're all, even six, like the ones in Santa Cruz, different than the ones in Carmel, different than other ones. Um, even for the same six watt charger. Um, I didn't realize that I didn't know what the base rate was. So when I was at the hotel, we stayed in Santa Cruz at a hotel and there was a charge point right there. I was like, well, How lucky are we? Plug it in. I plugged it in for like two hours. It was 9 and that was six Watts. And I walked in, I walked in and I, and I was like, so excited. I was like so excited. I was like, wow, this great. I was like, I guess, I guess it's a little cheaper than gas. I was like, okay. I was like, my first experience, like, yeah, that's California gas. Um, right. And then I walked in and the reception guy was like, Oh yeah. He's like the, the ones here, like five times more expensive than they should be. I was like, Oh, well that'd been nice. And he's like, it's not our fault. That's just like whatever, blah, blah. So then when I actually charged it for another like two and a half hours Uh, in Carmel, it was like 2 and I was like, Oh, that's much better. Right. Uh, so much, so much cheaper to charge. And I was like, okay, that makes sense for the slow charge. And that's much better. Cause it's cheaper, but I didn't realize that there's this. And then there's all of these like maximum hours. And then there's also, if it's full up over to a hundred, then there's like penalties and I was like, wow, like there is so much to learn in general for this thing, I was like, wow, this is bananas. And then, you know, As we're doing this, it's like, okay, well, in Carmel, we're going to walk downtown, so I'll plug it in, you know, charge it up and it was totally fine. And this is good. I will tell you this much actually having a gas vehicle that just gives you like one eighth increments so much nicer to have, because it's like not fearful. When I see it go down, I'm like, oh, this number, this it's like, it's like your, your battery and your laptop. I'd be like, oh no. It's like, it's like terrifying drive and you're like trying to game the system by like, you know, it's, I'm going to go, do I want level one, level three, whatever, like, you know, uh, chargebacks. Um, anyways, so that was really fascinating. And then, um, the real interesting experience we had is that we went into a Pacific Grove to get, uh, to go see some sites and then get dinner. I was like, Oh, this is cool. There's a DC charger here. Cause there's none in Carmel, only slow chargers. There's a DC charger. [00:19:51] Frank: Finally, something good. This one goes up. You're killing me, man. I mean, those, those, yeah, I, I love you AC power, but you are the worst for charging [00:20:00] James: a battery. Um, if you have a lot of time, it was okay. Cause like the one day we worked from home, so we just charged it all day. I'm like, okay, we got, Hey, 30 miles for free. That's great. Yeah, [00:20:09] Frank: exactly. If you can leave it overnight 30 miles a day, it's beautiful. You get into a good rhythm. For road trips, it's the worst. You can't use it for a [00:20:17] James: road trip. So I was like, okay, DC charge. This one goes to 66 or something like that. I was like, cool. And we get there and I go, okay, well we're, so I go, okay, well we're, we're already at 70%, but I want to get to a hundred cause it's the only DC fast charge around and I want to get as close to a hundred so we can drive around, not worry, and just max it out. I go, well, I don't want to go. I can't plug it in now. Go get dinner because I would get to a hundred and then I get started penalizing and [00:20:46] James: I want to run out of dinner. Move the car. [00:20:49] Frank: Yeah. Okay. So what's that penalty? I, I use a brand, uh, Charge America and I believe once it gets to a hundred percent, you're given 15 minutes to exit. Vamos. Uh, I believe that's the rule and I don't know what penalty they charge you or anything, but I'm always [00:21:07] James: there for it. I think that the EVgo was after a hundred, then it's 10 an hour. Okay. So they're charging it for expensive parking. Okay. Basically you're paying for parking at that point. So it would have been the worst, but I was like, you know, Hey, I'm going to try to. [00:21:24] Frank: And also as a member of the community, uh, there just aren't enough charging stations. So if you're leaving your car at a station, kind of a jerk moves. I appreciate your concern. [00:21:34] James: And that was my other thing too, is like, there's only two DC fast chargers there. And I go, I don't want to. Hog. Both of them. Now, nobody used any of them. Now, funnily enough, though, there were actually slow chargers, a few stalls over, but the DC fast chargers are all lit up. They're huge. You're like, let's do this. Right. The slow chargers, they're like tiny. They're like hidden in the darkness. So I would have just done the slow chargers. It would've been cheaper. Right. But I was like, Oh, let's do this. Um, so I went the gambit, like the first one was like 9 and then it was like 2, 2. And then this one was like 7 and it, you know, pumped it up pretty good. [00:22:11] Frank: I think Craig failed you a little bit here. If you're doing the slow chargers, there's a lot of people who just offer theirs for free too. So I'm surprised. We got to get you on the app that has the free chargers. Yeah. Uh, they're, they're a little hit or miss and mostly miss, uh, as in you report these. And then, uh, if you pull up to it, it's not there. You report it in the app. It's kind of like a community driven one. Really cool. That's cool. The problem is they never seem to clean out the database. So they have some old ones on there and then just never update. But I wanted to bring that up. Not all of them are pay. There are free ones out there. That's cool. [00:22:43] James: Yeah. Actually, you know, uh, Craig said that they, uh, They go to like a school nearby at night and they can charge for free or something like that, or like, it's extremely cheap. And I think at the Microsoft campus, it's like they have tons of, super cheap. Um, okay. So we got that charged up. That was cool. We will, it was fine. Cause we walked around the downtown, like saw some stuff. So then we drove around a bunch and then I said, okay, well, we have to drive from Carmel to the airport. And be at 70 percent and be at 70 percent now. I don't want to be at like a hundred percent math out. I can give him a hundred, but I don't give him free electricity. Am I a [00:23:17] Frank: sucker? I am not a sucker. [00:23:18] James: No, I am not. Now, um, what that meant is I needed to figure out how to get. And then try to equate some things and some math and whatnot. Um, so we stopped actually on the Microsoft campus. I didn't charge there. There's only slow chargers there, but I was like, this is Mountain View, right? Cause once you get into the city, it's like the map is like, it's like it's infected with EV chargers, um, outside the city. It's like little blips. It's like little blips, like someone [00:23:47] Frank: miles. [00:23:49] James: Yeah. Like, good luck. I hope don't, don't run out of electricity. So, um, I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to go to this. Craig's just raving about the Evie goes. He's like, Evie, go, Evie, go, Evie, go. Okay. Okay. So I pull up to the Evie go now. You don't really know where it's at. This is in the middle of nowhere. Now I don't understand why every gas station just doesn't have Evie church. How amazing would that be? Hello. Money making opportunity. This is awesome. Mind boggled. I don't get it. [00:24:13] Frank: Okay, let's talk about that for a brief moment, because what is going on here? Is it a protection racket? Is like, Shell Oil paying them not to have chargers? I don't know. Because like, they just, they have space where cars go. Yeah. Put, put extension cable where cars go. You got room for an air pump. Put a DC fast charge. Not hashtag, not a conspiracy theorist, but man, I feel like a conspiracy theorist with this one. Like, why doesn't every gas [00:24:42] James: station have these? I mean, that's the future, right? Heather and I were talking about it. Like imagine how many parking spots are in like one of those huge pilots and one of the, you know, whatever, like, but even just at your gas station, you're like, well, you got all these that you can just pull up to and get gas at, right? There's like all these lanes and there's like parking that like no one's at, it's like, there's all these parking spots. Hello. Hello. [00:25:03] Frank: And every, every one of them should have a little cable thing. And I don't get it because like, okay, all these, hi, everyone. If you own a retail building in a commercial district with a parking lot, just install them. It's free money. You put a little meter on there. People put their credit card in and your power bill goes up, but you. Charge them a 4X what you're paying and we're all happy. And [00:25:26] James: I think here's the, here's the ticket. I would expect that at every shopping center or every gas station, there's limits on time, right? So for example, at a gas station, 15 minutes max. It's a fast charge. I just need to get a charge. DC pump up. Well, DC pump up. I mean, that's what I'm saying. And even at the EV go, the maximum is 30 minutes anyways, because it's pumping on a Hondo. Um, But again, because the idea is to get people in and out, in and out as fast as possible. They want to make their monies. But that's what I'm thinking is that the gas stations at, at every single TJ Maxx, hello, boom, give me the money. And I know it's probably not the businesses, but it's whoever's owning that parking lot. But yeah, this was in front of a Safeway. So it was really convenient. I actually had to ask a gentleman who was charging his vehicle. I was like, I don't know what I'm doing over here. This is different than charge point. Help me out. And what funny part is like, it kept not connecting to the vehicle and he's like, Oh, you just got to call him. So he like laughed. I was like, and what I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try this. I'm gonna take it out and put it back in before I call someone on the phone. Let me just, [00:26:30] Frank: I'm a programmer. Uh, I'm a technician here. Let me do the advanced setup here. It didn't click. It didn't click. Oh, oh, it didn't physically connect. It didn't physically connect. I had a scarier one. Day one, I bought the car. I'm like, I'm going to go practice pumping it up because I'm going to go practice this. [00:26:46] James: You're like, well, this could be cool, right? You're like, this is so exciting. [00:26:49] Frank: Oh, I got so many pictures of it. I was so excited to be pumping electricity. Um, but, uh, my first, First two tries, it said, cannot connect to car. And this is like a data communications. Like I said, they're, they're negotiating the power, right? I'm like, what do I do? I don't know what to do. And on the third time it worked and I've never had that problem since. So I think I just [00:27:10] James: got really unlucky with the app I was using. Yeah. So I get it to work. Now the interesting part is that so at the EV, at the charge point and the EV go at the charge point station. So the second one I went to. Um, that one was the 66 kilowatt hour charger. Now it did have my charger and you like, when you open the door on the, the, on the ionic that you have to take another piece off of the fast charge. So there's like, there's like a little plug. So then you plug it in. Now, interestingly enough at that charge point, there was another type of outlet. It was like even a bigger pump thing. I don't know if that's a Tesla charger or if it's something else, but there's two types on it, which is confusing. So I was like, I don't know. Can I go to a Tesla station? Can I, is there adapters? Like, I don't understand. Cause again, there's no information in this car. So like, you're just assuming, I know the apps you can enter the car, but I'm like, I go to Ionic and there's a wide range. I don't know what, I don't know what vehicle this is. It's an Ionic five. So I just pick one and hope it works, but I get to the EV go Hondo. Right. And, uh, so then it's, it's right by the safe way. So I could go in, use the bathroom and then he goes into the bathroom, come back out 15 minutes, bop, bop, bop, 10 later. Right. So I think in general, we drove hundreds of miles and we spent about maybe 20 minutes. 25, 30. It could have been a lot cheaper that first one we got bamboozled, but now we know, so it's still a lot cheaper than gas. Now here's the thing. I understand why people are a little hesitant about buying EV cars, this entire system, what a catastrophe, it's just a mess, it's terrible. It is. And someone's got to fix this. I'm just saying like, it works, but it feels like it was all thrown together, but no, it's been like 10 years. It's like every hour, every charge is different. Everything's a little bit faster. There's no, there's no, like, there's, there's like weird communication. Everything's slow. It's like, what is going on? Why are there so, why is there none in this town, but a billion in this town? Like, it doesn't make any sense at all. And then you're like, well, what if every charger is full? Like I'm just screwed. Like, what is happening here? I will say this. If you're just zipping around town, no big deal. I think it's fine now, but if you're going, if you're going distances, then yeah, that's a problem and that's why people don't buy it. Cause they're like, what about that one time ever that I'm going to go once a year, I'm going to go on a big trip. So I actually, I actually, Heather and I talked about this. I actually don't, I think that if we got a extended range. We'd have zero issues doing anything. And even if we're driving to Seattle in Centralia, there's like a, you know, you there's not fast charges between where I live and, you know, we're going through big cities. I don't think it would be a problem at all. The real problem would be like, once we get to Seattle, if we're renting an Airbnb and doing something like trying to just, it's a time thing, that's what I really figured out is to me, renting an EV. I'm very uncertain. Like if you're renting, if you're renting a car and you're driving in town, or you only plan to go. I don't know, 30, 40, 50 miles? I would probably recommend an EV because then you have to fill it up. Then if it's at a hundred, you're probably never gonna get to, or if it's going to be, you know, it's gonna cost you five bucks, probably worth it. And then you can charge it ahead of time to the airport. You have to stop before the airport. Bingo, bingo. Now for us, cause we were doing extended. I mostly just felt a little stress the entire time. And it's, I never got below 60%. So it's not like I was stressed about running out of energy. Yeah. I'm just stressed about where are the chargers? Are they going to be there? And it kind of like used a little bit of my mind mush to think like it took a little bit of like this 0. 0001 percent of my mind was not thinking about this stupid vehicle that I had to charge all the time to get back to the airport. Right. It all worked out fine. We had plenty of time. We to campus, got a free sandwich, smoothie. But, um, you know, [00:30:47] Frank: You have to name your demons. I believe it's called range anxiety. I believe that's the term we've all given it. Like, yeah, it's stupid. And you, you were getting to the point where, where you have the hyper accurate gauge with the number on it, telling you you have 78 miles. What does that mean? Like, I I'm notorious for driving my cars around on a quarter tank or an eighth a tank. I'm like, whatever. That light's not on. Whatever. Because guess what? There's a gas station every five seconds. And I never, I never did the math to know what that was. Was that 50 miles, 40 miles? So like when you're driving an EV around and it says 60 miles, you're like, I'm going to die. Uh, I might not make it past that next turn up there. I've only got 60 miles. Uh, America is big. I'm like, can I even get to a Walmart in 60 miles? Whereas like if I had a gas car, I'd be at an eighth of a tank and be like, I can get another hundred out of this probably. [00:31:42] James: It's true. It's too. And then also this one, uh, Craig was asking me, he was like, Oh, is there a min and a max? Like, he's like, he's like, you know, he's like, mine says here's the number, but here's the min and the max. I said, no, there's just one number. And when you're going uphill. That number goes down much faster than when you're going downhill where it reverses, you know, in there. Because when, when we go across the pass in our Subaru, which is a combustion engine, yeah, the miles go from like, oh, you had, you know, I'm going uphill. It's like, oh, it does drop faster, but, oh, you're going downhill. Oh, you just got all those miles back. So of course it works the same in an EV, which makes sense. Because. Yeah. So work. We call it physics. Energy. Energy. Yes. Uh, you know, just simple things that we learned in grade school. So that's fascinating, but there was no min and max. And also there wasn't a, I think in a vehicle, in a gas combustion engine nowadays, and for a long time you would see your miles, um, um, per gallon, right? That you're getting. There wasn't a, Yeah. Miles per percentage, right? If it was like, Hey, you're getting 20 miles per 10%, I can plan for that. That's easy math. 10. Yeah. You know, in my mind, there's 280 miles in this thing. So in my mind already, I'm like, okay, every 10 percent is 28 miles. Yeah, just simple math, right? Take 280 divided by, you know, 10, boom, there's your math. Right. So that's my assumption. I don't know if that's right or wrong, but that's just my assumption. So, you know, my car, I can actually see how I'm doing on my drive in real time and it tells me those things, but I wasn't getting that percentage. Like, okay, can I plan this out a little bit more and do this? So it was a little bit more stressful, a little bit more planning. I still think it was a great experience. Very, very nice car. Like, um, very, Nice car. I think so much that Greg wants to buy one now. I'm pretty sure after driving in the backseat. [00:33:32] Frank: They're very nice cars. Um, I, I'm happy you had a good experience, uh, because I want to relate my brother in law recently rented an EV and I didn't get all the details of the story, but basically what I heard was catastrophe. Oh no. Didn't do any of the planning, couldn't find chargers, all the things because yeah, the network is pretty [00:33:55] James: right now. And if you don't know, I mean, here's the thing I literally got into this EV. I didn't know, um, um, what the name of the chargers were. I didn't know anything about the charge level. I did zero research, right? I'm not like, I'm not because when you, when you're, you put gas in a vehicle and it's a gas, right? That's not a network. I'm just, I'm just in my mind. I was like, I'm getting this EV. There's going to be chargers. Everywhere. Just, you know, wherever. GM, [00:34:19] Frank: GM subsidized a million gas stations back in the, you know, the, the network had to be built up and the other, you know, uh, yeah, I bet you, if you dug around in the menus, you could get all that information my car has, and it'll break down exactly where the energy is going to. A lot of my energy goes to my heated seats. Cause you know what, what's better than distance? A heated butt. That's way more important than distance to me. That's true. That's true. These are still economy cars. Um, and they, they have sweet spots that they want to operate and you don't get any of the advantages of the combustion engine, a combustion engine wastes a lot of energy and comes out as heat, but you can use that heat for wonderful things like heating human beings inside the passenger compartment. [00:35:02] James: Yeah. [00:35:03] Frank: There, there's like good things about that. Whereas an electric car doesn't generate as much heat. The batteries get hot, but they don't really tap into that heat very much. Um, so they have to run an electric heater and as you know, electric heaters are the worst way to heat something and that's just how you have to go. I'm, I'm thinking of heat right now, but obviously it all converts over to air conditioning too in the summertime. It's cold outside right now though. Uh, and then there's just a lot of tricks. So it's amazing that the screens that you can get for your miles per gallon, whatever you want to call it, uh, will show you like the climate control system is using 40 percent of your energy. And also these. American cars for a very long time, the engines were overboard out. They were just inefficient, but they produced a lot of power. We liked them. American cars. Yeah, yeah, burn, burn the gas. Yeah. Um, whereas, um, all of these cars, they are designing these motors to run at certain speeds, given these chassis. Uh, my car is very sensitive. Efficiency wise, talking efficiency, uh, to what speed you're going, uh, all the normal conditions, wind and all that, ignore all of that. Um, it's basically tuned to go 65. That's, that's the sweet spot. That's where it wants to be running. I like to drive at 75, 80, you know, things like that. And it hurts your soul because my car will, you know, The dashboard will literally turn yellow to tell you, you're being a little inefficient there. And I'm like, Oh man, I'm yellow dashboarding. So I go back down to 65 miles an hour or whatever. So that can be a little bit frustrating too. I do like the cars because they have a ridiculous amount of power, but because they're economy vehicles, they really are economy vehicles. Um, They just have that sweet spot that you need to be in. So if I'm taking this thing on a road trip, I'm honestly going to turn off the environmental system probably half the time, and I'm going to draft behind semis, and I'm going to do 65 miles an hour, and get every little kilowatt hour out of that battery that I can, because It is a light economy car. And I want to stretch out. [00:37:12] James: And there's a lot going on. Like, there's just like lights everywhere. Like everything's lit up. There's like, it's like blue mood lighting and it's like all this dashboard stuff. I know that's not taking a lot of the power. Um, and you're like. Taking some power, right? Exactly. It is regenerating some energy and this, this one had like toggles, uh, so you could toggle how much you want it to. Auto regenerate. So like when you're gliding, it will like, you know, auto regenerate stuff. I will say this, um, because I do have a lot of other things to be a. in depth EV rental episode, but a lot of good stuff coming up here soon. So one thing was fascinating though because the regenerative stuff, um, once I got back into our car. Cause here's the, here's the weird part. [00:37:54] Frank: I, I gotta ask you the most important question, but I'll let you, okay, [00:37:56] James: what's the weird part? The weird part is, Is that when you start your car? The ev Yeah. And you put your car into drive or reverse. Now this had a really weird toggle thing. This is a choice. [00:38:09] Frank: Yeah. Okay. Has a toggle. Which, where did you toggle the toggle thing to? [00:38:12] James: Well, no, I don't know what the toggle thing is. I didn't see a toggle thing. But the, but the, but the change from drive to reverse to neutral. Oh yeah. Right. Was like, it was like a turn dial. It was like so weird. Oh. And like I couldn't see it. It was, I didn't like that. It's one thing I didn't like. It's a BMW thing. I got used to it. NET MAUI, James Montemagno, Xamarin, Forms, and Xamarin Forms, NET MAUI, GeneXus Prediction of the Future, NET MAUI, [00:38:36] James: Technology Connects, NET MAUI, Rapid Fire, and, NET NET MAUI, Next [00:38:41] Frank: Gen Processing, [00:38:42] James: and, NET MAUI, Intelligent Services, NET MAUI. If you're, if you're, if your foot's not on the brake, the vehicle is moving basically for all intents and purposes. I mean, it could stay flat, but like, it likes to creep up and do stuff, but let's say you're on a hill, okay. You're on a hill, like we'd be parked on a hill and you know, when I'm in a car, I keep my foot and I have to like, kind of, I don't want it to roll back. So I put my foot on the gas. I hit the, or I'm on the brake. I hit the gas with the other one at the same time. So it ramps up and it goes, no, this vehicle. It turns out to move. It's like, are you sure you want to move? Cause if you really want to move, hit the gas pedal, you dummy. Cause that's the go button. But I was like, well, but I don't have the brake. I don't have the stop button on. I have no button on, and it just assumes you're good is so weird. Is that a toggle? Is that the toggle? Is there a toggle? Anyways, it was so weird to get back into my regular vehicle. Cause I was like, like when I, when I take my foot, it just creeps away from you. It was a little bit, it took, it took a good. 10 15 minutes to get used to, uh, re getting back to the combustion engine. [00:39:46] Frank: Yeah. Okay, so that creep away thing is a complete accident about how the automatic transmission was first designed. It'sit's a bit of a joke, um, you put the car in drive, it's basically in first gear. They don't have a not engaged first gear, therefore when you take the foot off the pedal, Break car go. It'd be neutral. It would be else your car is in neutral. Yeah. I used to have a 64 Cadillac and we tuned the engine a little incorrectly. And that thing would idle at like 15 miles an hour. You took your foot off the brake. You were going, you were just, you were just down the street by the time you remember to put your foot back on the brake. Yeah. Okay. So all these cars, um, as far as I could tell, they all have a toggle to switch between two modes, I like to call old man mode and new kid mode. Old man mode is when you're using an automatic transmission, and when you take your foot off the gas, the car trickles forward at an obnoxious rate. Um, but it's not just forward, it's also braking. Okay, this is the fun part. So, new kid mode, uh, also I like to call bumper car mode, or go kart mode, is, yeah, when your foot is not on the gas, It's, it's kind of braking. It's basically, yeah, it's almost better to think of it as an auto brake. Yes. When your foot is not on the gas, it's auto braking. So then you press the gas, gas, look, I'm calling it the gas pedal. When you press the accelerator, car accelerates. [00:41:14] James: Yup. [00:41:15] Frank: And then when you take your foot off the accelerator, mine breaks. Uh, now mine, mine does regenerative braking during that part. It won't actually tap the brakes as far as I know, but I think it does light up the brake lights. Because people behind me want to know if I'm in old man mode or go kart mode because my deceleration patterns can be very different. Uh, if I drop my foot off the accelerator, the car, I wouldn't say jerks you, but like you feel it, you, you feel that regenerative, uh, motor kick in. And I, I like it. I I've, at first I thought it was a little silly and I've really come to adore it. I really feel it's how cars should have been designed in the early days. Um, I think the whole idling forward is really just an accident of mechanics and history. Um, just let it go. Um, I, the only things I'll say are harder are coming out of cruise control. So let's say you got the cruise control set to 55. Uh, now how do you get out of cruise control? There's probably a way you can do it with the buttons. I can never remember that one. I tap my brakes. That's how I get out of it. That's [00:42:24] James: how I did it. Yeah. [00:42:26] Frank: So you tap your brakes. The problem is your foot's not on the accelerator. And so it's going to throw in all that regenerative braking. And so coming out of cruise control can be quite a jerk. So I find that that's the trickiest one. Um, coming up on a stop sign, you just learn the deceleration pattern for pulling your foot off the accelerator. And you really, you, you. Coast to hill. I mean, it becomes like a fun little game. Uh, that game becomes quite a bit harder on downward hills because now you're playing how aggressive is my regenerative versus the, uh, slant, taper, whatever angle of this hill. Uh, so those games become a little bit trickier, but I basically play the game of trying never to touch the brake pedal. And I love it. [00:43:09] James: Nice. Yeah. It was on this car. It had, that did have a toggle. So there was toggles on the, on the driver's wheel and you can go between zero regenerative and three as the maximum. The one was the default. And when you did three, like. It was basically breaking the vehicle. It was, it was really, and I was, okay, one sound seemed right. If I was going downhill, I kind of would adjust things a little bit, but I just kept it in one. And there's, there's a little bar that tells you the regenerative part. Now this car does, does have, it has all the bells and whistles, Frank. It has, it has the cruise control. It has all of the sensors. They were very aggressive sensors, just telling you all the time things are around you. [00:43:46] Frank: Constantly beeping. [00:43:48] James: It's got the. The keep in lane, the lane assist. It's got the auto cruise drive. I'ma drive this vehicle for you mode. It has, uh, the, I would like to change lanes. I will do that for you. Mode , do you have that? That's, well, my mine doesn't have that. Now. I'm jelly. So is your. [00:44:06] Frank: So is that one actually hands free or do you have to keep your hands on the steering wheel for the cruise? It gets [00:44:11] James: very mad at you. If you take your hands off the steering wheel at any time. I will [00:44:15] Frank: say mine. I like, because it's actually hands free you're allowed to take your hands off. It has a thing that looks at you though, to make sure that you are looking at the road. It is looking at you to look at the road. [00:44:27] James: This, this one, it does. There's there, you can go through the menus. I was like trying to like, just like random on where part does go into the menu. And there's one that's called like. Uh, how attentive are you or whatever? And it's like, there's a gauge. It's like, are you paying attention or not? I was always a hundred percent. I'm always looking all the time. So this one had all the bells and whistles. I'm a fan of bells and whistles of, I'm a believer in this. Cause the Subaru, um, the Subaru we have is a 2017 and it has the eyesight. And this one does the, it does a cruise control adaptive. it's got the lane assist. Amazing. Uh, the lane assist is in the Subaru feels first gen. This, this one feels like 10th gen. It's just like, I'm going to keep you in any lane, even if there's no lines. I don't understand how it does it, but it's like, whatever. It's amazing. So cool. Um, this one. Uh, I was talking to Craig and he's like, I was like, yeah, I was like, I was doing the cruise controls, like, uh, the, the, the cruise and the drive, the auto drive, do everything for me mode. And when you're doing that, when you're doing cruise, adaptive cruise, keep in lane, drive and shifting and, or changing lanes, it's basically driving itself. And Craig's like, yeah, you just gotta let in, just let, you gotta let in. You can't fight it, right? You can't fight. You just let it in. You gotta keep it in check. It did a good job. But. It was very impressive. I got to say, even though I keep my hands on the, um, on there, cause I was going to anyways, but it really. Did a fantastical job of just like doing stuff much better than the Subaru. Obviously this is seven years later. So I'd expect it to be the, the, the lane change, very fascinating. So this one, uh, I think it only works on the highway when it like really knows it can like sense it obviously, but what you do is the light'll come on and like, it's showing you all the vehicles around you and stuff. They're a little blocks, but, um, the guys rounded corners, which is nice. Um, and. Um, white, everything's a white block, which I impress impressive. Uh, and you just, you, you turn your turn signal to the right or to the left. And it, and it just, and it just moves it for you and it moves. And then it, once it gets in the lane, it turns off, it turns off your blinker automatically, does everything for you. And it shows you. And then if you try to do it and a car speeds up, it cancels it. I can't do that. And then it moves right on. Nope. Can't do it. It's like, it was like not qualified, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, that was, it moves. I would say this. I, I changed lanes a lot faster than the car does by itself. So if you are in a situation where there's a lot of vehicles on the road, it doesn't make a lot of sense. But if there's just a few vehicles or just you, Oh, it's kind of nice. It just moves over and does its thing. And that's nice. If you're in all the modes, basically, you know what I mean? Where it's like, you have everything going, just you want to do that. Um, but yeah, it was cool. I'm pretty jelly. Yeah. [00:47:16] Frank: Uh, I, I have to use my grubby hands to change lanes. It's like an animal. Yeah, uh, I love all those systems. God, they're the best. Uh, the first time that freaked me out, though, was, um, passing a semi. I was like, getting a little close. I will say this, sometimes I feel like, it's getting a little close, getting a little close. You look at the top down, no, it's perfectly centered in the lane. I guess I just naturally myself, I probably veer off a little bit when I'm passing a bigger vehicle. The computer has no fear. The computer's like, center lane, baby. Get out of my lane. [00:47:56] James: If anything, it has a bigger thing to detect that there's a huge vehicle there to stay away from. Yeah. [00:48:02] Frank: Yeah, yeah. I almost wish I didn't have to buy a car this last year because all these systems are advancing so fast. You know, you said your last car was seven years old and seven years, they're going to be twice as good again. Um, I've, I've always been a pessimist towards the full self driving just because I know how slow government regulations work. I've worked in an auto manufacturer. I know how slow all that stuff is. Um, but these, the way they do it is exactly what's happening. They slowly allow little bits and little bits and little bits and little bits. And that's, we're just going to creep into fully automated. And that's why we're just going to see these incremental improvements. Obviously there's driverless taxis going around San Francisco right now. We have all the tech. We're just waiting for the government to catch up and let us put that in every car. [00:48:50] James: Yeah. So I would say in a nutshell, overall. Good experience. I'm going to Seattle. Uh, well, by the time this podcast out, I'll be on my way to, well, I guess not at midnight, but like in the morning, I'll be on my way to Seattle. And I think if they offer me an EV, I think I'll do it. Cause I'm just going to go to campus and back. Oh, you're renting [00:49:09] Frank: a car. Okay. Yeah. [00:49:10] James: Renting a car, uh, only because the Uber is from the airport to campus. are like a hundred dollars. They're so expensive. It's the same price as [00:49:18] Frank: renting a car. I get you. [00:49:20] James: So I go, okay, like if I can get an EV, I don't gotta worry about gas and so like renting the car with the corporate discount or whatever, it's like, che It's way cheaper even though it's from the airport. It's only two days. So it's like maybe a hundred bucks or whatever. So it's like, okay. And then since I'm there and some teammates are there, at least one of us will have a vehicle to go do stuff outside of campus, so that'd be good. But the nice thing. Then I'm on campus. I could just charge it right there and be good to go. Or just, again, charge it a quick, there's in Seattle. There's a quick charge anywhere. Even if it takes an hour to get to the, the, through traffic to get to CTAC on the way. [00:49:53] Frank: Yeah. You're going to be stuck in stop and go, but that's also where those automatic cruise controls are very nice to stop and go traffic. So it's also good for I 5. I, I'm excited that you did zero research and still had easy success. Um, it's kind of how I went into it. I remember when I got my car, you're like, did you do all the research? I'm like, I did no research. I was just, I know electricity. I know cars. They'll go together. I'll figure it out. Uh, but I do agree with the, the network is terrible. Um, I'm glad you went to a real big city and were able to do it. Yeah. Seattle's fine. There is, um, you end up in Fred Meyers and things like that. [00:50:34] James: Charging car. Big parking lots. Yeah. Um, no, I think, I think that'll work out well. So I do think that it's a good experience. I think, again, if you're planning on it, You know, even if you got to ask literally anybody just that, you know, in the town or the ask the internet, I'm going to the city, do a little bit of research. What network is there? You need to download their app and do the thing. I think charge points in a lot of places, but that's at least the bigger one. That's all. But again, there's a lot of them out there, but I would, I would say I would still, would I've done it for this trip? I wouldn't have the story. Um, It's hard to say. I'm 50 50. I still think it's good. It doesn't make me so want to buy an EV. Like I'm not going to go turn in our car. I would say all the, all the, all the stuff in it. I was like, this is a cool car, but it doesn't make me want to go get rid of our Subaru for the electric Subaru. You know what I mean? Um, one, cause I'm in the mindset of like you did, I'm gonna ride this sucker until I can't no more. You know what I mean? Like my, my smart car, They don't even make the parts any, any more for it. But I will do whatever I have to do to get third party ports, do whatever. Like it's like my plasma TV until it, until the, the, the plasma is leaking out the sides. And it cannot turn on anymore. I refuse to get a new TV. [00:51:52] Frank: It's not even the first time, like. The car will let you down once. It'll strand you out on some highway, but you'll, you'll fix it. Cause you're like, car's got a little more to go. The second time it strands you, that's when you got to get rid of it. I went to the third time it stranded me. [00:52:07] James: Yep. Yeah. So, yeah. We'll see. [00:52:11] Frank: You'll wait. You'll wait it out. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Anyway, um, yeah, all those little, all the doodads, they're all going to just get better year over year. So the longer you can wait, the better, honestly. [00:52:22] James: I think so. Yeah. And we'll, we'll keep going. And I think that it's also fun because we have two vehicles, right? Which means we would always, I think, always keep a hybrid or gas vehicle. I'm a big fan of the hybrids. Hybrid or gas vehicle and an electric vehicle for just driving around town would make the most sense in general. So that's what I would encourage people is like, if you are thinking about it. And you have two gas vehicles and just get at least one of them. So it's one of them that makes the most sense. And maybe turn the other one to a hybrid. But again, I'm also in the mindset of, Hey, run your car until, unless then, unless the government's given like, you know, big incentives, like they're like, Hey, we will buy your vehicle from you at 500 percent of the value. So you buy an EV, then I'm in, right? That's the only real way to like, do it. But, um, the incentives today aren't enough. [00:53:09] Frank: Right. The, the, the incentives right now, um, basically the automakers jack up the car price by the incentive amount, so. And you can get all those fancy doodads on a combustion engine and all of that. Uh, they are, just for the mystique of electric, they do seem to be putting a few more doodads on the electric vehicles than the other ones. That's fine by me. [00:53:31] James: What about this charger at your house? What's the, cause we were in the app, Craig told me, here's the cool part about the ChargePoint app is if you are a business or just a house owner, you can just get one of the ChargePoint things installed in your house and you can charge people to use it at your house or your business, which is cool. They'll send you the thing. Look into that. I mean, [00:53:50] Frank: I literally live on a dead end, so maybe I'm not in the greatest location, but, uh, everyone go do that. We need more charge stations. Uh, yeah, so, my house, uh, I discovered, I was charging my car, um, outdoors with the slow charging. 120 volts, uh, eight amps max. Uh, that's like half as slow. Cause like most circuit breakers can handle 15, 15, 20. Yeah, exactly. [00:54:18] James: Wait, wait, what, what was, what was re restricting it to 18? Cause if you plug it into your outlet, it'll give, it'll give. You know, 13, if you go up to, it's going to flip the breaker. If you go over it, what was causing it to be at eight? I'm the kind of [00:54:32] Frank: guy that goes through every settings in a thing. I went through every setting in this car, man. If I went down every sub menu, every charging option, I wanted to see every option on this car. So I was clicking every screen and you can limit the charge rate on 120 volt, what they call level one here in the US of A. Um, you can limit it to eight Watts in case something else is on that circuit. Like maybe, um, you watch a plasma TV. Those, those suck down power, right? You don't have like a, [00:55:03] James: it does. You don't have like a dedicated 20 somewhere in your garage. Cause most of the time, like most of the time, what you find, by the way, if you're ever curious in your house, you often probably have a mixture of 15 and 20s and often you will have a dedicated 20 in your laundry room and in your bathrooms, there's usually one outlet by there because they, they want a dedicated 20 because you plug in hairdryers or things that suck up a crap ton of energy. And often in your kitchen, you will have twenties as well. Um, and often though, be aware that just because. The breaker says 20 doesn't mean the outlet is a 20 because my friends, if you're like me, where you redid all of your outlets in your house, why would you buy 20s? There's so much more expensive than 15. Just put 15s everywhere. Well, Frank, let me tell you, I have then now retroactively gone through the house and I've replaced the 15s that were 20s that are replaced with 15s back with 20s. All right. And so there should be in your garage a dedicated 20 somewhere, right? No? Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Who knows? Yeah, old [00:56:08] Frank: house. Plus here's the real problem. Um, I personally redid the wiring in the bedroom, which is the circuit closest to the circuit I'm trying to use. Here's what I did to myself. I hooked up an electric heater to the same circuit that was trying to charge the car. I do have a master's degree in electrical engineering and this is what I did. And so it became, do I want to charge my car or do I want to have a heated bedroom? Those became the options. [00:56:37] James: I mean, okay. So the next option, by the way, is for Frank to install and run a dedicated 20, because he is an electrician. Electrical engineer, he's not an electrician, but he's an electrical engineer. He figures out, they're basically the same thing. Um, except for like one, 20, 20, 20. No, we're not doing 20. I guess you could do a 240, right? Can you, cause I guess, could you run a 240? Is there in a, can you plug it into a 240? [00:57:05] Frank: You're driving me crazy here. Anyway, all homes in America are 240 volts. Uh, most circuit breakers just tap into one or two rails. That's why you get 120 volts. [00:57:13] James: Yeah, but like, for your, for like our, let's say you have a gas, uh, stove. Yeah. Uh, oven. Yeah. That's a 240. So, outside, you have a, we have a, everyone knows a 120 because it's the two prong, three prong. The, the, the two forties, they're weird. They're like, like claws. [00:57:34] Frank: Well, there's three kinds of 240. So when you go into 240, now you have to say, what is the max amperage at 240? Uh, and there are basically 20 amps, max 30 amps. 40, there's a couple of shapes. Let's go with 20, 30, 50. I think those are the three shapes. Gotcha. So the shape that, uh, my car wanted was a little circle mouth, uh, two vertical eyes and another vertical. So three verticals, you'll also get the ones that are somewhat pitched. You'll also get the ones that have a little hook on them. like little l's things like that, but the one I needed was three verticals. And th that turns out to be a 50 amp connector. Oh, so I needed to install. I needed to install a 50 amp circuit into my house. And this is where I'm like, you know what, this is where. A rational person would call an electrician, but I have a degree that says I know what I'm doing. So I'm just going to do this. Well, the real benefit was I had a friend visiting and he also has a master's degree in electrical engineering. So it was the old, how many electrical engineers does it take to install a light bulb kind of joke happening? Because we had two, Neither of us are electricians. That's the distinguishing factor here. Um, house electrician stuff is weird anyway. Uh, so I decided to install a proper 50 amp circuit. Now the joke is my house service is only 200 amps. So technically I can put one quarter, all the power that this house can take into your car. Wow. And I loved it. I'm like, I want the 50 amp circuit. And so you have to buy, um, six gauge wire when you're doing this, most houses, let's be honest, a lot of houses have 14 gauge. You should probably have 12 gauge. If you have a high power area, you should have 10 gauge. Six gauge is like, this is some heavy cable stuff. This is, I could hear my brother making fun of me because he's a linesman. He does real high power stuff. He does real wires, real cables, but this is about as big as you're ever going to install in your house. Six gauge wire. Yeah, it's 50 amps. Yeah. Okay. And it's, it's, it's three, three conductors and a ground wire. So four total wires going through this cable. And do you know how expensive that stupid stuff is? No. For 25 feet, these are island prices. I had to spend $180 for 25 feet, 25 feet of cable. 180 but installed a new breaker in the breaker box, which is always. A thrilling experience because you have to [01:00:16] James: rearrange other breakers together when they put it in the sauna, they had to put it in, they had to do a 30 and they had to like daisy, they did like weird things. I don't know what they're doing. The nutrition knew, I was like, I trust you whatever you're doing. Now, when I open, I'm like, I don't know what's going on. And he's like, he's like move things around in a weird way. So I was like, I don't know what's happening anymore. He wrote on it, but I was like, I'm confused. [01:00:38] Frank: Thank goodness. I inherited a pretty clean box. Um, it had about seven, um, posts free that I could plug. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. Yeah. So I was able to just pop one in, but honestly, I haven't worked on a breaker box in a while. Like, so it was a real fun lesson of like, take pictures, go to the store. I think that'll fit. I think that'll fit. Make sure you keep the receipt in case you got to take it back to the store. Um, uh, buy a box for it to install into the wall by the plate for it and just wrangling that wire. That's a lot of work getting it up into the box. Like you don't want to bend these things, you know, so trying to keep the box clean, electricians, they, you know, they're expensive, but they earn their keep. I think, um, after all this work, but thankfully with my friend and I, after just a couple hours, we got, we got. The box installed, the wire, the cable routed, cable routed into a box, got it up into a box, and then I looked at the little circuit diagram on the package, hooked it up, according to what I could understand the circuit diagram to be, these wires are so heavy, I don't know if I've said this enough, jammed it into the wall, plug the car in, the car beep boop, Beep boop. Beep boop. I will be charged in three hours. Wow. [01:01:58] James: So, so how do we calculate kilowatt, kilowatt, kilowatts, uh, per hour based on, we know the amperage 50, we know the voltage 240, does that tell us the kilowatt, uh, power, I don't understand. [01:02:12] Frank: So in a DC system, you would just multiply the voltage by the current and that would tell you power, but it's not DC, it's AC, it's oscillating. And so what you normally calculate is what's called the RMS power, the root mean square power. So you just, AC is a sine wave. You just kind of square the sine wave, take the root of it. Anyway. Um, It's, it's, it's, it's a good way to do that conversion, but it's, it's, it's not, it's not a great conversion because there's always power losses. The car has to rectify, it has to turn that AC signal into a DC signal and there's tiny losses there and et cetera. So I don't know if you notice when you plug your car in, it probably told you what, uh, we're probably pumping into it. Um, I think I've seen this one go up to like eight or 10. I'm not sure, but like much faster than it's ever done before. And like I said, I'm, I'm putting in one quarter of the surface of the house into this car. So I don't know. I'm happy. All the cords check out fine. Check them with multimeters. I haven't tried to actually put 50 amps to it though. [01:03:20] James: Oh, that's cool. I mean, cause here's the thing is like, I was, you know, You What Craig was telling me too is like, you know, if you own a car, you actually don't want to fast charge all the time. You do want a slower charge in general, not necessarily, not necessarily into the wall, but like a three or six or whatever, right? You don't want to do a hundred Watts, you know, kilowatt hours, like nonstop because it'll like, and you also [01:03:41] Frank: don't keep your battery at a hundred percent. Um, it's a, it's a normal lithium battery. You want to keep it at 80 percent over the long term. Yeah. Especially me. I don't drive very much. So I try to keep the battery between 50 and 80 percent just to keep it. You want to keep it higher than that 70 to 80 percent would be good. Uh, but it's part of like within the car options, you can just tell it stop charging at 80 percent and that's normally what you do. That makes sense. I love it. It was the first time I installed a high power circuit. Now the problem is because the wire was so expensive, I didn't put it in the ideal location. So I think I'm going to replicate this whole exercise one more time. But I got to go by like, Oh God, who knows? Hundred, hundred feet of cable instead of 25 feet. And that is going to be expensive. So I'm going to do that off island. Can't you [01:04:29] James: just splice it together? [01:04:31] Frank: Gross. No. Well, the big. You could, [01:04:35] James: you could. [01:04:36] Frank: Yeah. Okay. You got to see these cables, man. You are not putting a little twisty cap at the end of this cable. So if you do that, you would have to do a full junction box. That's what they [01:04:46] James: did here. They put a junction box in. Yeah. Yeah. [01:04:49] Frank: Yeah. Or you would even put another breaker box because the nice benefit of this big 240 volt 50 amp circuit is I could break it into sub circuits with another breaker box and do things like that. No, the real problem is the cord literally goes the wrong direction. Oh, I would just, I would run it. A whole nother direction. That makes sense. That kind of stuff, but it's fun adding to the house and enjoying the EV life. Yeah. [01:05:12] James: Now I'm curious if people have a RV, like a lot of, a lot of houses, like, um, a lot of places that are like older, like are on different areas. I'm kind of curious on the island, like often before there was a house, they would just like have RV area, so run an RV outlet. And I'm assuming the RVs aren't just plugging into one house. You know, 120, they probably have like a 240 thing that they plug into. They're [01:05:37] Frank: 240 volts. They're 30 amps, not 50 amps. So they're actually a different connector for safety, your safety and security. Um, and then also your washer and dryer, your, your range, your stove, uh, those are also 240, but they're 20 or 25 amps, which is another connector. That's why I was saying there's roughly three connectors out there for 240. And they're all different. Gotcha. RVs. I, I, I, it's a little bit annoying that all the auto manufacturers went for the 50 volt plug versus the RV plug. Cause certainly there are a lot more RV plugs out there. And so one of the first things I bought for my car was an RV adapter because there's just RV stations everywhere. [01:06:17] James: Yeah. That's what I was thinking immediately. It's like, Oh yeah, like it. There's just an RV station. If you're getting 30, okay, well, you're still getting five kilowatt, whatever, you know, it was fine. Basically anything's better than plugging it into the wall, you know, in general. Like I will say we were parked one time and we had this, we, we, it was funny enough because we were parked there. Uh, someone was already charging and then I came along. Charged and it dropped theirs down to three and then they're, I think they laughed. I think they laughed. And then I got six, which was great. And I even get a notification in the app that's like, you're sharing, charging, you're not sharing charging. So, which is cool. Um, here's my other last gripe that I have, which is fascinating, is they put the chargers in on the vehicle in different spots. Hilarious. [01:07:02] Frank: Now, where's yours at? Mine's in what I'm going to call the correct position. I know where yours is. Yours is where the old gas tank used to be, right? That's correct. We call that the old man spot. Now, it creates quite a problem at the chargers because you then have the back end people and the forward end people. And have the phone at the chargers is looking what other people are doing, by the way, after their car is charged. You can't see sometimes. [01:07:26] James: It's, it's terrible. Ours is in the back, and I have to back into the spot every time. And also, a lot of these are in, um, a big parking lot. And the one time that we had to charge it, it was angled parking. Which is really weird to back into angle parking. Cause you can't really do it by the way. Luckily there wasn't a lot of cars parked here, so we were able to maneuver it. But it makes it complicated. Yeah. I was like, I was like, why is this in the back? This makes zero sense. It makes literally zero sense. I was like, whoever needs to be slapped because silly. It's, it is so [01:07:58] Frank: weird. And it really does seem like 50, 50, I've seen new cars with it in the back, new cars with it in the front. Um, I, I can make the, I guess I could see like in the front, it's a little bit ugly, there's a weird cutout in the front of your car, but I love that mine's in the front. You just pull right in. I I'm a front Parker. I'm not a rear Parker. So yeah. [01:08:19] James: Well, you're going to put a charger vehicle. You are literally going to pull in to everywhere. Like the chargers are in front of the, we're not pulling into a gas station. We, you know, it literally is. It's mind boggling in many, many ways. In fact, I would say the best place for them to put it is in. It wouldn't even be on the left or the right side of the front of the vehicle. It'd be in the center of the front of the vehicle. Cause then you could, you could just pull in and doesn't matter. You wouldn't have to have like, worry about this. Like that would have been cool if they would have standardized like just the location, cause it's hard enough on gas vehicles. That you, you're like, you always got, you know what you're doing when you're driving your vehicle? You're always looking down like, where's that little arrow I've driven my vehicle for five years, four years, whatever we've had, the Subaru and the smart car. I never remember what side the freaking gas tank is on. So I always gotta look down. Where's the little arrow at for the gas thing. Um, my car didn't have the arrow. And I still, I could never remember what site the, the, the, the Subaru has it, but the smart car doesn't. And I'm just like, yeah, [01:09:21] James: every time. But luckily the smart car is small enough that it really doesn't matter. So [01:09:25] Frank: it is, it's, it's such the smallest wine on the planet, but it makes those. Charger's crazy. Like everyone's trying to like move their car around and rearrange it. Cause those cables are so bulky. A lot of the cables are actually thermally controlled. They're usually running water through it or not water, you know, cooling it through it to keep it cool. Um, so they're ridiculous. It's like walking around with a fire hose and just trying to plug your car in. And it's just awkward with people in different directions. Anyway, who cares? [01:09:57] James: All right. Well, there we go. Let us know what you think. If you've ever rented an EV, own an EV. Anything about an EV let us know if you have tried Frank's application. If you haven't, we'll put a link in the show notes, but give it a try. If you have an upper vision pro, let him know what you think. Um, if you want to support the show, we got a Patrion, patreon. com for such marriage, public FM. It's in the show notes. We got other places. You can find us online on, on Twitter's on the YouTubes. You can watch us. If you want to learn, I'm going to have like, there's like, they're not fancy. They're just literally just talking. So we want to listen to it. Some people like to use YouTube and just listen to the podcasts in the background. It's on YouTube music. It's on there. It's all this stuff. Check us out. YouTube. com forward slash Emerge conflict FM that wherever we're on the internet. Uh, but that's gonna do it for this week's podcast. So until next week, I'm James Montemagno. And I'm Frank Kruger. Thanks for watching and listening. Peace.