Why I am Never Buying an Electric Car

My Godfather is an amazing man. I have found myself in foreign lands under strange roofs a few times in my life and it is never particularly easy. This man has gone above and beyond in the making you feel at home and supported department. So when mentioning that he had to get a car across the Netherlands to his brother, Ashley and I were eager to offer our help. A way to repay a little bit of his kindness and see the sights along the way? Perfect. Besides, the Netherlands isn't exactly a big country and Google maps said it would only be a 2 hour drive!

Perhaps I should have added a little weight to my godfather's hesitation to just hand me the keys and let me jump on the road. The vehicle in question turned out to be an electric utility van, but so what? This is Europe and I had already noticed the charging stations at every gas station along the highway.

Evening December 21st:

We pick up the car  and, with what I assumed was an excess of caution, drove it to a nearby charging station to be sure we could plug in when needed. First one didn’t work--it required some sort of keycard/fob to swipe--but the next one had me download an app and started charging right away. The kilometers-to-empty display said we had 90 kilometers to go and my godfather said it maxed out around 120. Not wanting to stick around in a dark parking lot, we drove it back to our home and ran the cable through the kitchen room window to let it slow charge fully until the morning. We used the app to find some nicely labeled fast chargers along the route, picked one in the middle, and went to bed.

The plan: recharge at 100ish kilometers, eat a sandwich, and finish this thing off

Morning December 22rd:

At about 9:30am we leave our nice, normal car by the train station in Delden so when we drop the electric van in the Hague we can take a train back. The van starts up no problem, happily informs us that we have 124 kilometers to go on the overnight charge, and we're off. It's a chilly December morning in the Netherlands and the windshield fogs up. As is natural, I flip on the defrost; kilometers-to-empty immediately drops to 90. Ok fair, hot air does not just magically come into being, it takes electricity. The kilometers jump back up as we turn off the heat. Guess this will be a cold ride as we crack the windows and bundle up in our winter jackets. 

We hit the highway and start to move. The car is in eco mode and switched from D to B (which we were informed stood for battery), but we're moving just fine. After a bit of distance, I am noticing something a bit odd: the kilometers-to-empty seems to be going down a fair bit faster than the kilometers-to-destination reading I am getting from trusty Google maps GPS. It's not drastic at first, but certainly worrying. I start to follow as closely behind the nearest 18-wheeler semi that I can find hoping that helps (giant windbreak). Maybe it's just me, but I think my battery starts to go down slower. Still, after 20 minutes more, it's clear that we will not be making the midway point of about 100km and will need to recharge earlier.

We had downloaded a few apps for this endeavor. The one I used the night before had plenty of stops, but not as many fast chargers. Each app seemed to show us all the different stations, but would only work at a certain few. We found a station that looked like it would be well in our range from an app that required us to select the type of vehicle first: our glorious Nissan E-NV200. Seemed legit.

Look how innocuous it looks in this stock photo!

Smooth sailing until we find the stop and pull up to two little chargers. The app takes my dollars-turned-euros and I pop the "tank" to hook up. Huh, this one has it's own cords (at the previous two chargers, I took the cord that came with the van and plugged in). These cords have different looking plugs. And they don't fit. Interestingly there is a plastic plate on our van that looks suspiciously like where you might plug one of them in.

A bit of internet research later and it seems our model doesn't have the DC charger, but only the AC charger. Back to the apps. Alright, looks like we're not getting 75+ kilowatt hour chargers and will be regulated to the 50 and lower variety. But these chargers have pictures that look like our cord plugs into them. One is only a few more kilometers down the road. Back onto the highway.

The next stop has a big electric station with three different cords hanging and some adapter thing sporting the Tesla logo. New app, little sketchier, but working as far as I can tell. The cords don't fit directly into the van, but it looks like the cord that came with the van fits into their cord then into our car. Alright, sure. Doesn't seem like a snug fit, but I'm not an engineer. Screen on the charger appears like it should be charging (admittedly it is in Dutch), but no charge. 

I'm beginning to worry. I try the other charging station. Nothing. The tesla adapter? Sure why not. I hook that up to the charger and then into my cord. Nada. Maybe the machine… someone literally drives up as the thought enters my mind and plugs in. After a couple phone calls to try to see if they can help us on the phone (no), we drive around and ask the very nice gas station workers if we can steal a bit of juice to make it down the road to another charger. A bit of "please help us we're lost Americans and don’t know what we are doing and it's cold and all Dutch people are so nice…" and we've run a cable from their wall socket to the van. At least that works and we get some pretty blue lights saying the van is powering up. Another reading comes up on the dash and says 13 hours to full charge.

Lunch December 22nd:

A little over an hour later we've trickle charged ourselves to 25 kilometers according to the liar of a kilo-to-empty display. We've mapped out another hot contender only 16 kilometers down the road. Fingers crossed!

In vain. We make it fine to the next station and pull up to a charger that is clearly not what was indicated on the app. This one is completely new and not listed. After a walk around the rest area, we manage to find another set of chargers and they have the cord we're looking for. We're hopeful; the charger is owned and operated by the same app that gave us our original success the night of our now seemingly more important testing. But no charge. Phone call with the most helpful but admittedly sexist customer service (to Ashley: "can you put your husband on"). They restart the machine. No charge. They test it from afar. No charge. They bypass the paying and just turn it on. No charge. It's quickly becoming a "it's not you, it's me" situation.

We sit in the car wondering what to do. A walk around the rest area isn't providing any wall sockets to borrow from. We call godfather with the bad news. And video in his brother. Who examines the cord we're using and the cord he has on the other identical van he already owns for his business. "No, no, no. You can't use those machines you have to use the 22 kilowatt hour or less one not on the highway!" Ah, yes of course. This was apparently common knowledge to electric car owners though where they obtained said information is a mystery.

Back to the apps. Ok, so the kilo-to-death display decided that after 15 kilometers left, it would just give up all pretense of guessing and just blink dashes at you. Very well, then. There are two option, one a mere 2 kilometers away, but it uses a new app. And another 2 kilometers beyond that one. Welp, it's either that or we're towing the thing from here. Let's just hope we don't break down on the highway.

It is important to note that towing an electric car is not the same as towing a regular gas or hybrid car since they cannot be pulled. Rather they need to be lifted, placed on a bed, and driven to where ever you are trying to get it. And with the long charging time and power needed it is not as simple as bringing a couple spare gallons of gas.

No breakdown! But it is nerve wracking with those damnable, anxiety-inducing dashes constantly blinking at me. We make it. We pull up. We plug in with a nice satisfying snugness I had so been missing. The app won't work. Downloads and sign-ups and phone calls. Someone plugs in beside us. "These are private." Can you help us, mister, mister? We'll give you cash. "I can only charge one car at a time." and he walks off before we can get on our knees to beg. My luck: I had to meet the only heartless dutchman in the country.

Looks like 2 kilometers to the next stop. It's the same company as the one that worked before. With the nice helpful customer service. Do we dare? Again, it's this or be towed…

We go for it. We've our fingers crossed. We don't breath as we pass through a tunnel (a tunnel, are you f-ing serious?). We're in a neighborhood. The kilometers on the GPS tick down to meters. 400. 300. 200. Some lights flash on. The car feels sluggish. Is that light a turtle? Why is there a turtle? The car drastically slows to some sort of emergency get the F off the road mode and then dies. 150 meters to our destination.

Defeat? Ha! When I've come this far? I will push the damn thing if I have to. And, well, I have to. And I think about some quote I heard from Chris Rock: "I'd always end up broken down on the side of the highway. When I stood there trying to flag someone down, nobody stopped. But when I pushed my own car, other drivers would get out and push with me. If you want help, help yourself. People like to see that."

No one stops to help. He did get the part right about people liking to see someone help themselves. A group of neighborhood kids stop their bike ride and watch. I satisfy myself imagining I am creating an urban legend of the American so strong he pushes vans around. Bless the Netherlands for at least being flat though it really doesn't need so many speed bumps.

And because I love pushing vans so much I take an extra victory lap. This has nothing to do with not being able to see the charging station from the road. It was for the love of the game. And for my new fans.

It took more than 7 minutes

Finally we arrive. And, keeping with the theme of the day, the charger doesn’t work. On the phone they propose that the car is too dead and may just take a while. It is 7pm. I am tired. We have a 13 minute walk to a train station and a 2.5 hour ride home. The vehicle made it 80 kilometers from where we started in almost 10 hours. We go home. Our abandoned pup was able to endure a trying day of her own with over 12 hours of undisturbed sleep (and no bathroom break).

Morning December 23rd:

It is a slow start--we're exhausted from the previous day's ordeal--I spent the previous night watching YouTube, reading blogs, trying to decipher a Japanese manual for the van, and anything I can think of to prepare us to finish the job. The charging app hasn't updated so I'm convinced the van is still sitting there dead. Our plan is basically pray the charger works, if not knock door to door to try to run an extension cord to it, and, if all that fails, call numbers for possible electrical car assistance companies that could may help us bring it back to life.

We are taking the good old fashion gas-powered car with us this time as I have no intention of being stranded again along with the pup as a second co-pilot. The feel of glorious explosions propelling me forward as I speed down the highway is such bliss. Why else would God have populated the world with dinosaurs millions of years before we were ever here to see them if not for us to use their compressed remains to fuel such glory? Within an hour, we are at the van.

Which is dead as expected. We get the charging company on the phone again. They do their magic. Moment of truth… BLUE LIGHTS START BLINKING! Ashley and I jump and clap for joy. We send photos of that beautiful light to our godfather and his brother. This is a good day. We go to grab lunch.

In theory, since the van has a 24 kilowatt hour battery, a 22 kilowatt hour charger ought to charge it in a little over an hour. The handy app with the charger updates every fifteen minutes. So we wait. First update doesn't seem great: it's taken a charge but only 1 kilowatt hour. Maybe it was just, ya know, really dead. Second: 2 kilowatt hours. Third: 3. Fourth: 4. We are informed that the 22 kilowatt hours on the charger is "really just a maximum, it depends on usage on the electric grid". With five hours remaining until it is charged, we drive the hell home and take a nice long nap.

Evening December 23:

Back at the van 6 hours later, we thankfully find it is good to go. The liar kilometers-to-death meter says 134. We're too smart to fall for that noise. We've 110 kilometers to go and I'll be damned if I don't stop at a charger within 80. We find a contender and are off. It's dark and rainy and I drive right behind semi's because I'm soooooo done with this game. Either I'm dropping this thing off or dying trying. Ash shadows behind driving the gas-guzzler.

The drive is uneventful. Well for me. Ash has apparently pissed off a semi trying to stay behind me. I could see nothing but headlights in the side mirrors, but apparently this asshole wanted to ensure he was behind me instead of her and tailed her and cut her off repeatedly for 40min. May he never have a peacefully night of sleep again.

We get to our desired charger. We plug in. The little blue light comes on. We are 30 kilometers short of the final destination, but it is 9pm and I am NOT coming back tomorrow to finish the deed. We send the lucky new car owner a pin with the van's locations, drive the rest of the way on dino-fuel to drop the keys off, and then speed home as fast as humanly possible.

Good riddance

Google map for those following along at home.