Charging Station 2.0 Unveil

Hey guys! Hey, how you doing? It's your favorite co-host Jackie Rickard and Brian Noto. We're back. We're back.

Yep. Yeah, we're moving along. One of the projects that we started working on was installing Tesla chargers.

I don't know what we were talking about, but we were just going through it and trying to figure out how we were going to have them all set up and where they were going to place and how we were going to wire it all. And then I guess it came up during a conversation with Jono. Yeah, just like with Jono, like what to do, what could we do to be cool.

And like we were talking, you know, we're doing the 2.0 of everything. You know, they've got the podcast out, the brand, everything, but we always want to have that feel and kind of pay homage to where we came from. We always, even though it's been, you know, what, 2009, 14 years, I guess, since we've been doing this, it just, we just, we always want to kind of stay grounded in our roots, but do fun stuff.

Do fun stuff. And so one of the things that you guys had worked on pretty early on, if not just like right in the beginning. The 2011.

2011. Yes, we started building our own gas charger using the gas pump, like retro gas charging stations. Yeah.

So we had some just kind of sitting around and they were great dust collectors, I guess. But yeah, the one with the plasma ball is on the set. You've seen that one.

And then we had another one. We had the very first one down at the house that somehow magically disappeared. We've aliens beamed it up.

We don't know. Satan came down and grabbed it into the earth and the bowels of the earth. It just swallowed it.

Yeah. It disappeared. Yeah.

It looked like tremors. Yeah. But we had this old, uh, Chevy charger gas pump.

You've got this guy. We're thinking about doing something with it. We're not sure.

And we really can't talk about it. What we would do with it because then it wouldn't be any fun. And we'd have to eliminate you from all temple walls, obelisks and clay tablets.

Oh, kind of just came up that maybe we would redo it. Just do a 2.0. Yeah. And actually use it kind of as like a pedestal instead of just purchasing one.

So Brian's been kicking ass on it. I mean, kicking something, kicking ass, taking names. So should we, like, I guess, I guess on three, one, two, three.

Oh my looks like Superman, right? Kind of old school 1950s diner type look. Yeah. I mean, kind of reminds us back to the DC threes that Jack used to fly and you know, that kind of stuff, but it's Superman a little bit.

Um, we're assuming we're going to get in some kind of trouble. We hope, sorry, but you know, do what you want and eat what they bring you. You know, it's good enough for government work

So we, you know, we, we, we want to show you too, what the pump looked like before. So let's take a couple of minutes and uh, yeah. See what the 1.0 version of this was successful.

No one seems to be using it at this, at this turn. Right now, the society of automotive engineers, SAE, are in the balloting process for our new electrical connector for electric vehicles called J1772. We use just a 15 amp, 120 volt AC receptacle on our Porsche.

That gives us the widest flexibility, but it's not really the best connector. Um, it's a little lightweight for some of these things with a 24 kilowatt package. Um, we're only drawing about 10 amps at 240 volts.

So we pretty much get away with it. But as the battery packs get larger, we're going to need a little heavier duty current. And that brings us to the charge station.

It's not a charger. It's simply an AC connection. But when you're hooking up that kind of power for convenience, um, there's some niceties that you can include in it.

And we'll talk about those a little bit. What I've done is instead of the brushed aluminum charge station that the BMW Mini E and the Tesla, uh, use is I've picked up a replica, a reproduction of an old 1950s style, uh, computer, what they used to call a computer face. Uh, this one is now, but they used to call it a computer face, uh, because it had these digits, um, gas pump.

We found a fella in Hickory, North Carolina who was making these, um, and selling them. They're not the original pumps. And I wouldn't probably do this to, uh, an actual vintage pump, but since these were a replica, I didn't have any, uh, uh, problems, uh, uh, doing modifications to it.

So that's it. I mean, that was kinda, it was clunky. It was, you know, that was Jack's design.

I built it, it was very analog. Um, you know, we had the DC to DC converter in there. We had the 240 power running through there.

We needed 12 volt for the lights, right. Contactors everywhere. But that was how we did the handoff with the original EVSE.

We have it in there. Uh, 1.0, the very first ones that they did that were clunky. Now they're, you know, about as big as a, you know, matchbook, if you can find one, but so that's how we did it.

And that's how we built all three of them. And, um, yeah, it kinda, it kinda worked, but it was, this was a lot different. Yeah.

This one was just kind of sitting at the entrance of the shop and then had some decals on it. Some stickers had a different, it had like a Chevrolet plate. Yeah.

Yeah. This, this place, um, we've always liked their quality, a gas pump heaven. I can't remember if they're in Nebraska or something, but they, they, you know, we bought three of them from them.

They're awfully pricey, but they're, they're cool. And it was a good way to install a charger out here. One of the issues was that we weren't sure how we could bring it out.

If we would have to just take it out every day without it getting stolen. Yes, exactly. So this one's bolted down.

This one's bolted down some newly laid concrete, and then they drilled a hole through the wall. Which is always the fun part, especially when you can't see both sides of the wall. Yeah.

One's on the side. This is an old building with sparks start flying, things catch fire. Yeah.

No, it didn't happen like that. It was actually really well done. I almost broke the drill bit off of my hand, but that's okay.

No, no big deal. You know, live dangerously. That's my middle name.

Right. So we did this. And, uh, so we just came up with doing a pedestal and it's, it really does mimic the same design.

Um, and maybe we should show you kind of what we did now that we've unveiled it. Let's show you how we wired it inside and what it looked like. First we decided, because it was a, the option between the J 1772 plug and then the regular Tesla plug.

So it's just sitting in this window. So you can kind of see it charging and then had to read thread through their charging cable and it's got the holster over here, but yeah, added in a little Edison looking led light Yeah. We put some decals on there.

Yeah. We put, yeah. Jackie put together a, uh, yeah.

Counterfeit Tesla logo. Uh, just in case you're curious, anybody at Tesla? No, I don't know what you're talking about. We actually love you.

We love you Elon. That's right. So yeah, you can, uh, kind of see the progression of it, but we decided to also put it up on the website.

You guys can check it out. Yeah. Um, we can do a custom if you wanted to and use whatever plug or anything like that.

Yeah. I mean, we, we can do, you know, we can do anything with it. This, this was kind of cool.

So we've prototyped it. Now we can do the new Tesla, even the old, even the old one. If you have one, I did gen two or this gen three in here, but yeah, but you can do anything in there.

We could do another charging station. Um, we can do, if you want it to look more like the gas pump with the decals printed on it or something, like whatever you guys feel like a pithy saying, you know, anything that you really want. But if you really want us to do it, um, I think, what did we say? Like we could start at like 2,500 bucks and go up from there.

It's depending on what kind of customization, what kind of customization and what kind of, you know, interior you want in terms of your charging abilities and things. But one of the other things I think that brought it up was a good point from Jono. Cause he has the model X and he was talking about, cause he's just moved into a new place and he's having to run an extension cord from the house.

Cause there's no spot for him to really install it. And it's not easily accessible. Um, run an extension cord from the house and just charge it off of a one 10.

So that's kind of a big pack to charge on a one 10. Yeah. And this is kind of a funkier, unique way of having your own pedestal.

And then, and even though this is, you know, run through conduit and everything, we still ran cable and then with a plug on the end and have it into a regular functioning 240 outlet. So, you know, when, when we built ours originally at the bottom over here, where we have our, uh, dust to dawn sensor so that the light goes on and off at night, um, is where we brought the actual cable to plug it in, in and out. So we can do that.

We can do one again, one 20 to have lights, make it a longer cable, make it longer. If you need to have it more portable or things like that. So we, you know, we're, we're open.

We don't know it's nobody may care, but maybe some of you might. And if not, I think it's hella cool. So yeah, it is kind of cool.

I mean, it's kind of like a Superman pedestal out here, you know, where else, uh, that's not going to go anywhere. Not going to go anywhere. Yeah.

Like a Fritz Lang, 1920s movie of, you know, uh, metropolis or whatever, but, um, we don't know. We have to have fun every now and then here, you know? Yeah. We might have to mount a screen so people can come up and do like a drive-in and then they can just plug in.

It's like you're at the old, uh, drive-in movies, you know, with your EV charging while you wait. So that would be a fun, fun thing to do, but yeah, check it out. The progression and then even some homage to the beginning videos that you and dad had, but yeah, let us know.

Okay. Until next time. All right.

We'll see ya.