 |
| Before EVs After EVs |
Buyer beware! Electric vehicle ownership will render your tool collection useless. For most, this is a wonderful perk in replacing unreliable, gas-powered vehicles with EVs. For me, I was left with an identity crisis.
Two self-proclaimed attributes that I proudly embrace are: 1) I am a creature of habit, and 2) I take pride in reparing things (often having to fix the various machines that I, myself, break). When these characteristics are simultaneously present, happiness and life-purpose become aligned in symmetry and beauty.
Take, for example, the years in which we owned our 1992 Saturn SC. That car suffered from a perpetual cycle of being broken. What good fortune! Every weekend, I was tasked with fixing the Saturn so that my wife and I could make it to school and work the following week. If there was ever a miraculous span of a few days in which the car didn't break down, I would end up perusing the local Sears hardware store and buy a new tool to preemptively practice an unforeseen car repair. Then, for the rest of the weekend, I would be in the garage 40 straight hours fixing, say, the platinum-tipped spark plugs that I cross-threaded into the engine's cylinder head.
Then, along came these pesky electric vehicles. At first, it was such a hopeful time in my life. I saw wonderful potential in needing new tools, and, surely, long weekends in the garage awaited and would require a new skillset to repair the mysterious EV Drivetrain.
It didn't happen, though. My tools went unused. My garage went from a repair shop to a storage place. My weekends were filled with family time, instead of lovingly cursing at our cruddy cars that kept breaking.
 |
| Blast that dangling EVSE! |
After going all in, and purchasing our second Nissan LEAF, I set up our upgraded portable EVSE on one side of the garage for fill-up duties. The resulting installation solution was one that perpetually drove me nuts, though. In haste, I had mounted a couple of wall hooks that had previously collected dust as idle bike hangers. While maintaining portability of the EVSE for road trips, the hooks did not sufficiently support the EV plug handle during garage duty; every night, upon returning home from work, I would see that the weight of the handle caused it to drop nearly to the garage floor during the day. It was sloppy. I needed a solution!
The anticipation of doing a car-related project in my garage was nearly unbearable. I, however, wanted to take time to research solutions. It was critically important to get this right, as it was possibly going to be my only chance of using mechanic's tools the entire upcoming year.
After many a long nights standing in our cold garage, starring at the wall and visualizing an ideal solution, I took to the Interwebs to find a company that manufactured what I needed. While reading about, and comparing, numerous EVSE wall hangers, I honed in on the few best products available for EVSE cord management.
 |
| Injection Molded EVSE Holster & Cord Management |
The winning product was an elegantly designed EV plug holster, with an incorporated cord management solution. Small. Simple. Superior. After all, Occam's razor reminds us that the simplest solution is the one that ought be selected. At $25, the EVSE holster manufactured by "erroneus," and sold on MyEVBlog, was seemingly expensive for a piece of plastic. However, exceptional quality and design were deciding factors that made this a no-brainer.
The week following the online purchase, I anxiously checked the front porch every day for the incoming delivery. After three or four days, I sensed that my wife was onto me. I eluded her inquires until the package arrived. After describing the pending car/garage project, she quizzed me with a few poignant questions. Clearly, I was stressing her out. She was likely not wanting a perfectly working car--or charging station--to be broken by my handy hands.
 |
| New EVSE cord management. |
Installation of the EVSE cord management solution was frustratingly easy. Just the included four, strategically placed, stainless steel screws were needed to provide a rock-solid wall mounting of the holster. To appease my handyman aspirations, I stayed in the garage an extra thirty minutes to fool myself into believing that a large-scale project had been accomplished.
I understand that this is the 21st century. As such, I am reluctantly succumbing to the notion that the age of gas-powered cars is ending. Those thermally inefficient money pits that gave me purpose in the days of yesteryear will soon be destined for memories of nostalgia. I hereby surrender myself to future.
No comments:
Post a Comment