mergeconflict375
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[00:00:00] James: Welcome back everyone to Merge Conflict, your weekly developer podcast, where I've stumped Frank this week in our exclusive Patreon, uh, episode where even I was confused on how something worked. And then I stumped Frank because we started to talk about a triac. Uh, which I didn't know what that meant, but uh, Frank has no idea how it works, so I'm excited.

Uh, and I've stopped him. 

[00:00:20] Frank: Yeah. Yeah. It's a little embarrassing. Um, literally there is a triac element in iCircuit that, um, I didn't write. I'm getting help writing iCircuit these days. And so it's a little embarrassing. I think it's, it's kind of a nice level to hit though, where there's a feature in your app you don't actually fully understand yourself.

So you did challenge me. While I'm challenging myself, I'm going to go learn everything there is to know about Triax and be back. I'll be back. Just didn't cover it in college. Kind of learn 'em. Yeah. . Well, 

[00:00:52] James: I had no idea about anything. I was puzzled how this, uh, smart thermostat worked, uh, with only two wires.

Uh, and if you want to learn more on our 20 minute Patreon, uh, check it out. at patreon.com/merge Conflict fm, it's a goodie. Uh, maybe I'll even post that one to YouTube at some point in the future, which is our new YouTube at youtube.com/at emerge conflict fm. Anyways, Frank, this week. Uh, you made one of the most important life decisions, uh, beyond buying a car.

But, sorry. You made one You Spoiler alert. Uh, you made one of the most important life decisions besides buying a house, you bought a car. I think. 

[00:01:33] Frank: Is it an important life decision? I don't know. I mean, it's certainly expensive. It's a lot of money. But is it important? Nah. It's just a lot of money, that's what it is.

Yeah, my, um, gorgeous 2006 Volkswagen Rabbit, uh, has been progressively dying over the last couple of years, and I kept kicking it along the road, and it's decided it doesn't want to go along the road anymore, so I said, what's one to do? Uh, I have a fixer upper house, so I decided, should I have a fixer upper car?

And I'm like, you know what? No, I'm going to go get a nice new car. And so it's probably been almost nine or 10 years since I've had a nice new car. And so it's a bit of a luxury item, bit of an extravagance, but here I am. I actually have a nice new car and I'm, I'm very happy to have 

[00:02:23] James: it. Now, I don't know much about said car.

I do know it's an electric car and I do know that it's not a Tesla because that's what you told me. And you could be, you could have been lying to me and Heather and

I, we We played a guessing game because Heather was like, Oh, she was super excited. She was like, okay, what, what do we think? We looked at what does Frank need? What is Frank's price range? Is he buying new? Is he buying used? Is he trying to get a tax credit? We don't know. Uh, last time we bought a car, we bought all of our cars used.

So we have a 2009 smart car, which they no longer make parts for. So that'll be fun. Um, And there's one person that will service them. Even the dealerships, the BMW or the Mercedes Benz dealerships will not service them anymore. They're done. They're out of here. But that one, we don't drive that much. So it's just like at this point aging and it's just like hanging out.

But it, it, it, uh, it's great. And, uh, that it's just good. Drive it till it dies. Drive it till it dies. That's why I said he, uh, my mechanic was like, Oh, if you're going to sell it, you should try to sell it now. Cause it's like gone up in value. Like we bought it for 4, 500 and now it's worth like 5, 000. I'm like, why would I sell it?

Like I, like I can park the thing anywhere. It's a car I can park anywhere. And it's the only. Convertible car that I've ever owned. 

[00:03:40] Frank: Well, the reason I kept kicking my car down the road was I was convinced it's, uh, it's the devil, you know, you know, like I may know all these things that are breaking on the car, but at least I know they're the things breaking on the car you go by.

And a new used car, and well, you just don't know that devil just yet. So who knows what surprises it's going to give you. 

[00:04:01] James: And it's the same thing. We bought our 2017 Subaru Forester off of Craigslist as well. So we bought both of our cars recently. I sold my Honda Element on Craigslist and I bought two cars.

We bought two cars now on Craigslist. And you go to the mechanic and they take a look at it. But again, you don't know, you don't know, right? Luckily we've had. Everything's been great and in great shape XYZ, but you, I, I think I also am a little bit to blame. Because I kind of try to convince you to keep putting money into this money bucket just to keep, because you know, it's, it's a car and how much you're going to drive it, is it worth it?

But you made a decision, it happened, Frank, and this is the buying an electric car in 2023 Frank Krueger edition. And I'm really interested in what, what mentality weren't you in? Like what research did you in? Was it new? Was it usage? You, did a tax credit influence you? Because there's that. Was it a price drop recently?

Cause I mean, I obviously know, I know it wasn't a Tesla because you told me that, but the Tesla's have been dropping in price. Is it a, is it a big car? Is it a small car? Why didn't you buy a hybrid? I mean, there's so many questions that I'm asked because how, you know, how many miles can you get out of it?

Is it an electric smart car? That'd be so amazing. Those are my questions that I have. So start, start us off. 

[00:05:17] Frank: Yeah, sure. Hey, let's start with the hybrid. Okay. Well, we'll start with my mentality. Uh, so I was actually mostly shopping around for used cars also, but it was, I was quickly realizing you had to put a bit of A few dollars down to get a decent used car.

The cheap used cars just aren't that great. So you have to put a few dollars down to get a good used car. And then eventually I got into the mindset of a new car. I don't know where that flip happened. Let's just ignore that flip. And I spent a day shopping for cars and I honestly did start with hybrids.

Uh, I had full intentions of just getting a hybrid. I think they're, they're, they just make sense today. Uh, there's petrol stations everywhere. You, you get the extra little oomph from the battery. It just makes sense. Uh, a friend was debating this very, this very question though, recently, because like, there's still a premium on hybrid cars.

It brings the price up a good eight grand, probably I would say on average. You know, um, yeah, just getting that extra feature depends on the maker, depends on the car, but. You, you're generally paying for that hybrid part. Anyway, so I was shopping for those, I had fun, uh, I spent a day, uh, I'm sure there's good websites for this, but god, the websites are terrible, right?

So I just made a Google spreadsheet, listed every car I was interested in, uh, went and priced it out for the minimum features. This is how I buy cars. I go for the minimum feature spec that has the feature I want. So the feature I wanted this round was, um, just stupid, adaptive cruise control. Carplay.

Carplay too. Yeah. Well, nice to have. Yeah, definitely. 

[00:06:57] James: Why, why is it wireless carplay? Can I get wireless carplay? Cause if I can get wireless carplay, I'm in. I've had a rental with wireless carplay and it blew my mind. I was like, what is happening right now? This is amazing. 

[00:07:09] Frank: Jumping ahead to the end of the story.

Like I went to go pick this car up and I was like, man, I don't know if it has carplay. I sure hope it has CarPlay. I do not research things very well. Um, right. So I go price out a bunch of cars and they were all nice. Um, I, I did one thing that kind of bothered me. I, I put an image column into my spreadsheet and I put a profile image of every car and James, they, every single one looked the same.

Like, just gross silhouette profile of the car. Every car looked the same. I was like, oh my god. I am not feeling inspired. So I was very proud of my spreadsheet. But in the end, I was like, here are 20 great cars I could go buy. These are the hybrids, mostly hybrids. I put a few gas trucks on. I had a Toyota Tacoma, just because they're awesome.

I had a Chevy Blazer, just because everyone in my family is buying Blazers these days. Um, there were a few token. Things on there that I wasn't gonna buy. Like, I was looking for something a little more trucky. I was definitely in the truck category. I didn't want a sedan this time, and I definitely didn't want a little sports car or anything.

Like, the new Prius, I think, looks amazing. And it's a great hybrid. They even have a plug in hybrid version of it. Um, but it's still a sedan. You're still a little bit low on the ground. I mean, room wise, it's a great car. All that stuff. But I was looking for something a little more. Higher up off the ground, that kind of thing.

[00:08:42] James: Very, very American of you, by the way. Yeah. I just was watching because I was just, I was just watching I think it was a wall street journal or CNBC and it's like the last car, it's like a Mitsubishi. This is the last car that you can buy new for under 20, 000 is going to stop being manufactured in 2025 and sold in the U.

S. Like, because the shift towards crossovers and SUVs and trucks in America is so high because the gas has gotten a little bit better, not in the trucks. Buying a truck is a terrible idea. No, but, um, , unless it's electric, but even then it's so expensive. Like, they're so expensive. I was looking up the Rivian.

So $80,000. Who's got $80,000? I've, I've got, I God. Did you buy Rivian? Oh my god. No. I didn't buy a Rivian. Oh my gosh. Oh, um, the Rivian. They got the lights, you know, they got the lights, you know, it's a Rivian, but it's going to get old. You always know it's a Rivian. Yeah, it's a Rivian. But the Ford Lightning 

[00:09:43] Frank: looks good.

Ford Maverick. Maverick's like the cheap Lightning. Maverick, I believe, is a hybrid. I don't think there's a pure electric version, whereas the Lightning. Lightning is expensive, out of my price range. Um, Maverick might have been doable, my price range. But then I started debating, do I actually want a truck?

Or do you want something else? Yeah. Um, and then just on a whim, I started thinking electric, it's kind 

[00:10:08] James: of weird. Huh? New, modern, fresh. It's new, 

[00:10:12] Frank: you know, like you're spending so much money in this modern world. Hybrids, definitely a smart choice, but like. It just wasn't inspiring to me. I, I've worked at car companies.

I've worked on cars. I know the ins and outs. I've worked in the sausage factory. You work in the sausage factory long enough, you stop caring about sausage, or you start seeing it in a very different way than everyone else. Um, I've heard this about movie reviewers. The reason a lot of, like, movies that are popular, people love, but get bad critic scores are because critics are just looking for something new.

They're just looking for something they've never seen before. And that's kind of me with cars and kind of somewhere around car number 20 on the list. I was like, I need something new. Let's do something modern, James. Let's do something crazy. I didn't even think it was that crazy, but everyone I told about this idea, they're like, really, you're going to get an electric car?

I'm like, really? It's 2023. I thought they were kind of common at this point. Uh, so I was a little bit surprised at actually other people's reactions to my reaction. 

[00:11:12] James: Yeah. And you know, I think that the other, well, the other aspect of Heather and I thought about when we bought our smart car, there is all electric smart cars, but they only get like.

They at the, at the end, I think they get up to like 90 miles per charge, which is not enough. Okay. And we, and we were gonna buy ours on, in Portland and then drive it to Seattle and we would've had to stop like four times to charge it . And it's a slow charger, so it's like, terrible idea. Yeah. Well, we're always renting, right?

So when you're renting a a, a place, you can't get it. You can't get an electric car. This doesn't make any sense. You, you're not gonna pay the extra spot. Mm-hmm. , we're parking on the street. We're parking for the, we're getting a sticker on the cheap street. Parking. Yeah. That our car is definitely getting broken into.

So it doesn't make any sense to get an expensive car. Or, to get a fancy electric car. But you know, we thought about it here, because I have a friend that has a Tesla. It seemed nice. And he's got like the supercharger at home and that stuff. And I was like, well, especially if you have a place that you can get some sun, you put some solar panels on there, right?

You know, I mean, imagine you're getting free. I'm thinking like, how do you get free charging? Right. I don't want to pay extra money for it because you're going to put petrol in. I was, I just filled up the car for. 460 gallon down here in the Oregon. You know, although I don't got to pump, I don't got to pump my own gas.

You know, there's two lines now pump your own gas and self ser. And, and full service. Um, I'm not pumping my own gas. That's wild. If people aren't caught up on Oregon laws, we're just like New Jersey as far as pumping gas. However, they passed it now. 50 percent of gas stations can be self serve are you are 

[00:12:37] Frank: allowed to pump your own electricity?

If it's like, 

[00:12:41] James: Yes, you can pump, there's Tesla superchargers, you can pump your own, you can pump yet on electricity. Yes, you can, you can plug it in. But, but I told Heather, I said, I refuse to pump my own gas on principle. Not doing it. I'll probably do it at some point, but you know, I refuse. 

[00:12:57] Frank: So we're 12 minutes in, I should actually say what I bought so we can actually start talking.

Oh, let me guess. Cause I, I want to talk about the electric stuff. Okay. I 

[00:13:06] James: think we're going back and forth on it. I think it's an, I think it's a Nissan Leaf. Okay. I think it's a, uh, well, I don't think so. I don't think it's a, okay. I don't think it's a BMW, the I whatever. I don't think so. Um, I think 

[00:13:28] Frank: those were out of my price range, but I didn't really look into them.

To be honest, I was out of the BMW Volkswagen. Uh, the last car was a Volkswagen. I have a policy of don't repeat the brands. 

[00:13:41] James: Okay, so not a Nissan Leaf. Fascinating. Uh, my other guess, and I don't think it's a Mini, a Mini Cooper, that's for sure. Um, I was thinking... Like the same 

[00:13:52] Frank: company again? 

[00:13:53] James: Yeah, I was thinking if it wasn't the Nissan Leaf, maybe one of the newer Hyundai cars?

Well, I guess you said you wanted an SUV though. 

[00:14:02] Frank: Not an SUV. Well, okay, this is, this is getting painful for me, so let's get to it. I bought a Chevrolet Bolt EUV. Ah, 

[00:14:12] James: the Bolt? Okay, yes. The Bolt. That was, I think Heather guessed the Bolt, yes. 

[00:14:16] Frank: Yeah, the Bolt used to be, um, a little sedan y thing, and it's still little, but now they make a UV version of it, the EUV, which has a higher stance EUV, so it's a slightly bigger version of the Bolt.

Same platform, of course it's the same platform. But it's, um, it's, it's what I was looking for. A little bit of a higher stance, honestly, size wise. I don't think it's too much better than the Rabbit or anything like that. But I do have to give shout outs to the honorable mentions. There's the, um, Ioniq, great car.

Tesla's obviously great cars. Uh, EV6 from Kia, great car. Oh, I mean, honestly, the electric cars are really nice right now. Um, the Chevy I went with, honestly, there was a part of me that just kind of loved the idea of getting a Chevy again. I used to work for General Motors. I worked on, I worked on Chevrolet cars.

Um, And I thought it was kind of cute. It was in my price range, especially, well, you know how buying cars go. It got, the price went up a little bit because I had to get features I didn't want, but it started out in my price range nicely. Um, it did have its own little price drop. I don't think it dropped as much as Tesla's dropped, but, um, it's a pretty good bargain.

It gets really good reviews. Um, I don't have a Apples to oranges comparison with Teslas or anything are then the bolts just have a really good reputation. And I was excited to try it out as an electric car and join the electric world and be an electric person. 

[00:15:49] James: Did you buy, you bought this new, it's like this a new, you walked into a dealership.

I did, 

[00:15:54] Frank: I did. This is crazy. I I've only done this a few times in my life because it's a lot of money to do this. Um, but yeah, I decided I wanted a, a new, new, new, new, new, new car. 

[00:16:05] James: Did you get pre approved at your local bank before going into this dealership? Heck 

[00:16:10] Frank: no. Um, but I did decide, um, I was gonna try to pay mostly cash for it.

Like I said, the price came out a little higher than I wanted. So I financed a few dollars, just 

[00:16:22] James: the sticker shock. They hate that. They hate that and it feels so good. 

[00:16:28] Frank: Yeah, I ended up financing a little, but mostly like just cause I was getting sticker shock, but I think I'm just going to pay that off quickly and get it over with.

Um, 

[00:16:37] James: my goal is 

[00:16:40] Frank: to keep this conference going. Yes, I got the premier red line. 

[00:16:43] James: Yes, you're stupid. I love it. I, by the way. So, so everybody knows I literally went to the Chevy bolt website and it's kind of like the Apple website where it's like, do you want this model or do you want to just keep adding money onto it?

You don't even know what you're getting, but you're like, let me just get all that stuff, which you, I assume the, the, the, the premier. Redline includes the HD surround sound, adaptive cruise control, which is very important to you, which I have on my, my 2017 Subaru, it's very important. Leather, it's got a black and red badging for some reason, red accents, white wheels, wireless, wireless phone charging, dual level charge cord, and 247 mile estimate.

How many? 247. 

[00:17:27] Frank: Okay. That's okay. That's what they keep saying too. Uh, you know, one of the worst, okay, there's two bad things about, nah, three bad things about buying Chevys. A, they fall apart. B, they have horrendous turning radiuses. And See, they have those hideous golden badges on them. So yes, James, I paid extra to get rid of the golden badge and turn it into a black badge because it looks better that way.

And this way I don't have to chip it off with like a screwdriver or anything like that. 

[00:17:57] James: Did you add on, did you add on, I love the name of these. Did you add on the super, super cruise 

[00:18:01] Frank: package? James, let us now talk for the remaining 12 minutes about supercruise. This, this was actually a large selling feature of the car.

Uh, so while all electric cars, please bear with me here, James, while all electric cars are pretty awesome and they all have like adaptive cruise control and all that kind of stuff, Tesla's obviously lead in autopilot and hands free stuff. And basically no one sells hands free. Aside from Tesla, they all sell adaptive cruise control as a safety feature.

That's how the government lets them operate. That's how they do it. There is however, one other company that has hands free. Do you know what company that is? Chevy. Chevy. Actually, originally it was Cadillac. Uh, so we should really say GM. Cadillac's got it first. This, uh, technology called Super Cruise. The difference is it is actually a legit hands free technology.

You are allowed to take your hands off the steering wheel when it's engaged. And that was a big selling feature because, again, I wanted something a little bit inspiring. And I wanted something a little bit fun. And also, I'm buying a car at a really awkward time. Like, don't buy a car right now. Buy a car in five years.

They're gonna be totally different and totally better. Um, so, I needed a semi fancy car so that it wouldn't... Act like a piece of junk in five or ten years and things like that. So anyway, Super Cruise is super cool because it's a proper hands free driving with a lot of caveats. I want to get into the caveats, but we can still talk.

Other things too. 

[00:19:37] James: Did you also buy the sun and sound package? I hope you did. Cause a good sunroof is 

[00:19:42] Frank: This, this is where the dealership got me. So if I was a patient person, I would have waited for the exact car that I wanted to show up in the exact color I wanted with the exact packages I wanted. But I'm not a patient person.

They had one car on the lot that had the feature, the supercruise that I wanted, that was my absolute required feature, and I ended up getting a moon roof and a stupid Bose sound system because. I'm a bad negotiator and I'm impatient. So, yeah, the cost of a new car is getting these, these unfortunate upgrades.

[00:20:18] James: Well, it's like, you know, also at the same time when you walk into a dealership, it's like, I want to buy this car and like, well, we have the most expensive ones of all of the land and like, I guess I will buy that. 

[00:20:30] Frank: Yeah. So like your best bet, I think, with buying a car is figure out exactly what you want.

The exact color, the exact features, the trim, the packages, exactly what you want. Call six dealerships, ask them if they have a car that exactly matches what you want, and negotiate the price over the phone, go in and buy the car. I think that's the most nice, polite way to buy a car these days. Going to the dealership and shopping for a car is ludicrous and terrible.

And so, I had made up my mind that I wanted This car with these features. When I contacted the dealer, my problem is I live on an island now, and it's really without a car. And it's really hard to go car shopping without a car when you live on an island. And so I had NET MAUI. painted myself into a little bit of a box.

And so I was willing to accept the unfortunate package upgrades they shoved in my face just for the convenience of buying a car that was physically in proximity to me and that I could get home with. 

[00:21:33] James: It makes sense. Last time I bought a new car, it was a horrendous experience because I did all the things wrong.

Uh, like every first time new car buyers things. And I, I, I, My car stalled out on the way to the parking area where they, they, they bought back my car for 500. We'll give you 500, which is the minimum that they'll give you for it. Um, if you, if you make it to the lot. Uh, so yeah. 

[00:21:58] Frank: Yeah. I'd even make it to the lot.

Yeah. So anyway, uh, I was a little bit nervous because I didn't know much about the car, but I ended up, um. Seeing it, took it for a test drive, actually fell right in love with it. It has all sorts of silly things. James, they're putting the weirdest feature on electric cars now. Are you aware of one pedal driving?

[00:22:20] James: Why? I 

[00:22:21] Frank: like, I call it bumper car driving. It acts the way bumper cars at amusement parks used to work. And I am in love with it. Um, when you are pressing the gas pedal, gas pedal, the throttle pedal, the car goes forward. As it should. Yeah. If you take your foot off the gas pedal... The car actually breaks. And so there's one pedal that's both a brake and the gas pedal.

And when you let off of it, it breaks. When you push the pedal down, the car goes. It's like the bumper cars at the amusement park. And I love it. And what I love most about it is that it's always using the, um, uh, battery recharge, uh, regen system as it's doing its braking. So you get, you get back, you know, five.

Wa hours over the course of spending 200 watt hours, but whatever. It's fun. And the little dial goes into the green and it's fun to see the dial go into the green. One pedal driving, everyone. It's stupid, but I love it. That's 

[00:23:24] James: fascinating. I never thought about that in a car, but it does make a lot of sense because obviously when you are in a normal car, just a standard, one of the standard classic two pedal cars.

Um, Yeah, you know, you are engaging the, the brakes manually to like, to break the car, but they're, they're able to do that for you automatically through smart technology. So that makes a lot of sense, especially in this instance of regen. Cause one thing we recently, when we were in Norway, we rented a car and they gave us, they were like, Oh, it's a little bit bigger as a RAV4, uh, it was a nice car.

And it was a hybrid though. And that was super cool because petrol is extremely expensive in Europe. And, but I only had to put in like, you know, we drove a lot and I only put in like 15 or 20 because even though we drove hundreds of kilometers. It was almost all on the, the, the, you know, where I was doing that.

Cause I was gaming the system. I was like, how far can I go? Where it's like, cause they have it where it's like, you're, you're, you're regening energy, you're in eco or you're using your gas. I'm like, I'm always just gonna, I'm gonna keep it in that eco area as much as I can't even go uphill. Like you can game it, right?

You, if you, you really pay attention, it's fun. So that's cool. That's a one pedals, like another game. 

[00:24:39] Frank: I love it. It's a whole different way of driving, and I feel bad for passengers because I'm still learning it, but I like new things, you know? It just intrigues me. It's something fun. Um, and the car gives you a guilt report every time it turns off.

It's like, your driving style has cost you plus or minus. This many, uh, watts. And I am pleased to announce my driving style is kept me in the green. So I am being an efficient little driver over here. But then even on the speedometer, it has another little guilt meter. It's like, yeah, the car can probably go 240 miles, but on the low end, we're going to call it 190 because who knows how you're going to drive here, buddy.

I don't know how you're driving this car. Um, so yeah, let's, let's skip over the dealership. Let's go to, let's talk about some fun stuff. Have you ever charged an electric car at like a charge thing? Me 

[00:25:34] James: neither. No, never. I never have. No, I never have. Cause the hybrids, like I don't even know how they work.

Cause I've only rented them. I never even owned a hybrid. I have no idea how anything works. 

[00:25:43] Frank: FYI, they are making plugin hybrids now where you will be able to charge your hybrids, which is super cool. You should definitely look into those. But yeah, my first time I'm like, well, I've watched YouTube videos on this.

How hard could it be? So I look up the closest one. It's at a Walmart. Of course, it's at a Walmart. Drive my new car over to the Walmart. I'm all excited. I'm going to charge my new car. I get to the, get to the place and I'm like, Oh, there's an app. I should get the app. Oh man, there is no Wi Fi or there is no cellular signal here.

So I had to spend like. 10 or 15 minutes of just installing this app and getting registered and all that stuff. I'm like, I'm so excited. I am going to go charge my car. So I walk up to the thing and it's like, plug your car in. I'm like, great. Plug my car in. And it's like, tap your thing. And I'm like, tapping and it's tapping.

Okay. Then it makes some click sounds, some spinners come up. And then there's some screen with a giant green button on it. I'm like, I'm not going to read you. I just hit the green button. And then there's some more clicks and it says error. And I'm like, what? I just bought this car. How could there be an error?

And I totally didn't read that last screen that I just clicked on. So that's annoying. And the whole time I'm like, okay, at first I was the only one at the pumps. They're not pumps. I know. And then there were two people and then there were three people. And then I was looking at the pump and I'm like, this isn't the pump I want.

I want the pump that's 350 watts or kilowatts or how many billions of watts they put into these things. I was at the slow one, man. I was at like the 18 or something like that. So I shuffled my car over. I'm like, well, maybe, maybe my car just didn't like that pump. Plug in the next pump. Do the thing. Click, click.

This time it doesn't even pop up a green button. It's just like, Nope. I'm like, oh. Oh, no. I don't know how to operate pumps. And then I'm like, look over and there's a lady and they're like, you, she just gave me that look of like, don't ask me. Don't ask me, sir, please. Don't ask me. So I'm like, okay, I won't ask her.

You staring at this pump and pretending I know what I'm doing. I unplugged it. Plugged it back in, did the card again, click click, nothing, click click, nothing, click click, nothing. Finally, something occurs to me. That screen with the giant green button on it, it had an 85 on it. 85, the number 85. And I think there was a percent there, 85 percent.

And then it occurred to me, I wonder if there's like some weird shut off thing in the car. We're at 85%. It just doesn't charge anymore. Lo and behold, I hack sorted the computer system, and there's a whole dial where you can set the max charge limit for the car. And I guess this is a smart thing to do. You don't actually want to keep batteries at full charge.

So if you left your car plugged in at home, you might want to just keep it at 80%. 5 percent charge because then you're not, you know, a lower power bill and you're not ruining the batteries. Great idea. Not a great idea when a newbie buys a car and they can't figure out why the car won't take the new pump.

But it was great. So I slid the gauge up. I'm like, no car, please charge to 100 percent as I thought you should. Plug the thing in. Thank you, Electrify America. Here's the real kicker. So every time I was trying to Pump gas into this car. You're supposed to pay for this gas at some point. I don't know. I was really curious to find out how much.

Not gas costs. Um, they must have like some kind of random thing because I won the, it's your random free charge day thing on the pump. So then I got a free, I got a free 15 percent charge on my car because I, I, cause I entered the system so many times, eventually one of them had to have been free. And so I got free, free electricity for my new car.

So that was my first experience trying to rapid charge my car. It was fun. 

[00:29:45] James: That's great. I mean, and I like that it was free and like, you could have got a full charge on it for free, most likely if you just drive your car normally, but now it's just going to be chilling for at a hundred percent, like for who knows how long now can you charge it at home?

Like, can you plug it in at home as well? Oh, okay. You can. 

[00:30:03] Frank: Yeah, uh, so you can absolutely plug it in. Um, what you need are some big circuits that can deliver big amperage and wattages to these cars, and I don't have any of that right now. So I'm just plugging it in into a normal external outdoor outlet, and

that's it. It is, actually, the car can limit itself to 8 amps, which is roughly half of what a circuit can handle, so it's using up about half of a circuit breaker circuit, U. S. circuit breaker circuit. And in that mode, I believe I did the calculation, it would take about 5 or 6 days for the car to charge from zero.

[00:30:42] James: Oh, okay. 

[00:30:42] Frank: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I'm never gonna let it get to zero. And so, for my driving life, um, trickle charging off the house is... Actually just fine. Uh, especially we'll talk about a few other things, especially because I can go rapid charge once I'm away from home, if I need to, in any of the places. 

[00:31:02] James: That's pretty cool.

Like, well, if you did, if you were able to give it a dedicated 20, like, let's say you had a dedicated 20, you could do better, right? Can you tell it's like, hey, this is... 

[00:31:13] Frank: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, upgrades that I can do. Uh, A, I don't have anything else on that circuit, actually. So, I can, in the car, tell it to use 15 amps.

So, there I just halved my time. Nice. Alternatively, uh, in the US we have 120 volts by default, uh, but we have 220 volt outlets. There just aren't that many in the house. So I can either drag an extension cable through a window through my house, or get a new, uh, uh, 220 volt service to, like, my garage or something installed.

And that will bring the charge time up to maybe a quarter of what I was saying, so maybe a day, I think, a car would charge in. I'm probably gonna do that eventually, but there's, I have no crushing need for it because turns out one benefit of the island is there's just tons of free electric car charging places here.

Oh cool. And so I can literally just roll up to a bunch of different places here on the island and just plug my car in and go drink some beers or something while my, uh, pumps up. I guess. 

[00:32:24] James: Yeah, I don't, is that a good idea? Oh, it's self driving, so you're probably okay. 

[00:32:30] Frank: Well, we, we actually should go back to that.

There are caveats. Um, I'm fine with it. Like, uh, you can lock the car while it's, um, charging. And so the worst that's going to happen is someone steals your charging cable, but why? It's just an extension cord. It's nothing fancy. So I don't think that there's any kind of theft or anything like that. In fact, there seems to be cars all over this place plugged in that you have no idea where the owners are.

And so I just hope to become one of those. 

[00:32:59] James: I'll be really interested once you take a long trip, like maybe come and visit us sometime. I guess you can stop at Brian's house, probably halfway. Cause you'll have to charge somewhere, but like, you know, that's the thing that Heather and I were really thinking about, like, you know, because.

It would make a lot of sense for us to like, you know, put solar panels on our house and then like, you know, get some free energy and get an electric car. We get a lot of stuff. That'd be pretty cool. But then we do do a lot of driving and I'm always just like, I don't want to stop. And I got to charge it.

It was not a supercharger. And like, you know, the grid, like I know, I know we'll get there at some point where there's like, they'll just be everywhere. It was like gas, they're still building gas stations, which seems crazy to me, but like, you know, like gas stations are everywhere and it takes five seconds.

Right. Like, when is it going to be where I can just like sit there and. ten minutes.

Ten minutes 

[00:33:50] Frank: is pushing it, um, I think if you've had a Tesla and one of their super chargers I don't even know but I think that's like 30 or 45 minutes or something like that. I think for my car, I'm looking more at a couple hours. I don't have the fastest, fastest charge. Mm hmm. think Um, but a hundred percent I'm really looking forward to that road trip and I'm just going to take my time!

Um, you know, the car should be able to easily do. Over 200 on the highway. And after 200, you know what? I don't mind an hour break. It's fine after 200 miles. Uh, so that's fine. I'm excited to find out how long charges take though, because yeah, I just haven't driven enough to know what a full charge is. But I'm, I'm open to the excitement of it.

And I just think there's going to be more charging stations built up. It's, if you are a business and own a building, it's free money. You are paying for electricity anyway. You might as well put a plug out there, put a POS system up, charge two X what the power company charges you for the electricity and make free money.

Oh, all these people 

[00:34:58] James: with cars. How do I put one in the front of my house? You know what I mean? Like, how can we. Exactly. 

[00:35:03] Frank: Do it. You're going to catch the weirdest people just parking in front of your house to go charge up. But think 

[00:35:09] James: about, you know, they used to put like meters. They used to put meters. Yeah.

Put like, you know, quarter in and charge. But why isn't there just every, every single word down the road? Okay. So now let's say you are driving. To come see us or the Brian's house, which is also equally as far. And you're cruising in your super cruise. Uh, and, you know, so what are these caveats, you know, can you just.

[00:35:28] Frank: Yeah. Okay. The caveat of the super cruise is that it only works on General Motors approved roads. What does that mean? I know, right? What does that actually mean? It means, um, they're paying a company to go LIDAR scan roads and create very high resolution GPS maps of the road system. Um, their current maps aren't good enough.

Um, they're relying on precision GPS along with VisionTech, of course, VisionTech, to keep you in the lane and all that stuff. But for whatever reason, they have this extra requirement of they got to go manually scan every road that they want to turn it on for, and they're up to, the marketing says 400, 000 miles.

But what that really means is just the biggest highways. in the area. If you live in a place with lots of big highways, you're probably fine. Uh, I live in a place with only one big highway, but, you know, we're, we're on that one big highway all the time, and so it'll be lovely to have the supercruise on for that.

I'm very sad that the supercruise does not work on my little island, um, but hilariously enough, like the lane keep assist, which is ancient technology, that can't even find the lanes on the island. I'm sure a Tesla could do it out here, but. Pretty much nothing other than a Tesla could do it out here. 

[00:36:49] James: I'm looking at the chevysupercruise.

com, which has the map and they have a toggle. This is my favorite UI toggle. There's a toggle, you know, like an on off toggle. Yeah. The, the problem with the toggle is that it's not on off on the left hand side. It says Bolt EUV and on the right hand side, it says all other models. I don't know what this, I don't know what this toggle is doing.

Is it, does it mean I'm 

[00:37:15] Frank: in a special class? 

[00:37:17] James: Yeah. Does it mean, well, anyways, basically it's highways is what it is. Yeah. So you can take the I 5 and super cruise on the I 5. Yeah. 

[00:37:27] Frank: And all the other safety features work for the other stuff, but yeah, that's cool. Um, I, I guess highway one too. So I guess I'll finally have an excuse to go to California on highway one.

I, uh, a few of the desert roads, just because, you know, desert roads, there's like three roads in the desert, so they might as well map them, I guess. Anyway, I think I'm just going to plan trips based on the super cruise network. I'm only going to go to GM approved cities in the United States. 

[00:37:56] James: Okay. Let me see if you can, you can make it all the way to our house.

Oh, okay. Hold on. I'm looking. I'm looking. I'm looking. I'm looking. Okay. So you can, you can cruise down. You can get down to Seattle. Okay. Cruise. Okay. You have to take, you have to take the Columbia River Gorge. Okay. I'm 

[00:38:16] Frank: willing. I'm willing, James. Can I super cruise the gorge? Is that what you're saying? 

[00:38:21] James: I think so it's very confusing 'cause it's like experience in the bolt e u v and more than 400 million miles of compatible roads for other select super cruise enabled Chevys.

I said 

[00:38:32] Frank: 400,000, it's 400 million. That makes a little more sense, I guess 4 million . 

[00:38:37] James: But yeah, it depends. 'cause then they have a super cruise in other vehicles that can do more. But then yeah, the, the, the bolt e u V can do less. 

[00:38:48] Frank: Yeah. Well it's a Cadillac feature primarily. They, they like to keep it. This is how General Motors operates.

When you're a giant mega corporation, you got to give your features out to different brands because those brands represent different values that you have. Blah, blah, blah, whatever. The car can drive itself on I 5. That's all that really mattered to me. Yeah. 

[00:39:10] James: So you can go up and down I 5. Now, based on this, you can make it.

You can super cruise for quite a long time. It definitely through the gorge. There might be like an hour or two where you might have to drive, but. Oh no. Oh no. But it doesn't look like you can't get through. It doesn't look like you can get through Mount Hood. So maybe, I don't know. The map is confusing because the toggle is confusing, but that's just because.

This is 

[00:39:38] Frank: only one way to find out, I suppose. Yeah, we 

[00:39:41] James: got to go for it. Okay. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I'm excited for your, uh, yeah, I'm excited for this. This is cool. This is a cool 

[00:39:50] Frank: vehicle. It's fun. It's a, it's a once you started with an important thing. I still don't think it's an important thing, but it's a once every 10 years in my life kind of thing.

So it's fun to get a new car and play around with it, especially something that intrigues me. And then I, I find a little intimidating. Especially the new electric gas pumps. I find them scary. I will. It is. 

[00:40:14] James: It's funny because I've always thought that same exact thing where it's like, you know, I, anything new, new is still actually kind of a little scary.

Even though electric cars or hybrid cars have been around for a long time. Like even when I drive in a hybrid car, I have no idea how it works. It's like just pure magic, right? Like again, because they don't even have plugins. I was like, well, if you don't plug it in, how do you charge the battery? I don't understand.

Is there a battery in it? I don't even know. Um, I, I still have no idea how a hybrid works. Cars work. It's a mystery to me. Um, I don't even know how an electric car has worked. There's no engine. Is there an engine? I don't even think there's an engine. Nothing moves. I don't understand. It's. 

[00:40:45] Frank: Crazy. I just have to interrupt you there because that was probably, that's what actually kind of really sold me on the car.

We popped the hood. I'm very used to looking at engines and there was not an engine there. There was just very carefully wired electronic components. And I'm like, wow, it looks just like an electronics lab in my car. And I kind of love that. 

[00:41:08] James: Oh my goodness. Well, I'm excited for your journey, uh, in your, uh.

Uh, Volt and Bolt, Bolt, Bolt, Bolt, Bolt, Bolt, and, uh, we'll have to get an update once you do a bigger trip and just see how it goes. Um, and if you have tips, pro tips for Frank Krueger right into the show, merge conflict. fm, hit us up on Twitter at Proclarum at James Montemagno. At MergeConflict. fm, we want to know your tips and tricks of electric vehicles.

Cause I'm sure someone, uh, one of, one of our 28 listeners has to know something about electric 

[00:41:43] Frank: cars. Mostly. I just want to know is, is it bad form to leave my car charging for free overnight? Probably. 

[00:41:51] James: I don't know. It's a good question. Yeah. What is the etiquette? We'll find out. Yeah. Let Frank know. I'd be curious as well, but I think it's going to do it for this week's Merge Conflict.

So until next time, I'm James Montemagno. 

[00:42:02] Frank: And I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for watching and listening. Peace.