SALT LAKE CITY — It’s routine for electric vehicle owners to stop, charge their battery and go about their day.
But it’s not without its chances of running into precarious situations.
“I was charging at about midnight and two young men came up, pounding on my window wanting to see inside my cool car,” said Amanda Richards, who has had her Tesla since 2021. "My heart rate goes up and all I thought of was, ‘What do I do if they don’t go away?’ I can call 911. I can lock my doors, but I can’t drive away."
Why is it that Richards found herself stuck while charging her EV?
“They all have a single flaw, and that is that when you are plugged in, whether or not there’s electricity flowing, you can’t shift out of park,” Richards said.
Plugged in and in a pinch, fortunately those pests left her alone that night. But what if that wasn’t the case? Or what if you have to take off during an emergency?
“Normally if you’re plugged in, you can’t drive ... until you get out of your car, unplug and then you can drive away," Richards said. "Well, if someone is threatening you or something bad is happening a couple stalls down, you don’t want to get out of your car, you just want to be able to drive away and this EVject makes that possible now.”
Enter EVject, the brainchild of Richards, her husband, and mechanical engineer Erick Vega, who explained to FOX 13 News how the device works.
“What we’re actually doing is we are using mechanical switches and levers within the device to make the EV think that you’ve actually gotten out of your car and unplugged the charger,” said Vega.
That means the driver has control from inside the vehicle.
“By default, every UI has the option of clicking the lightning or the lock charge port, and the moment I do, it’s going to release the EVject back there,” said Vega. “I will go back there, you’ll see that the trigger is actually down and the door is trying to close because it thinks that you have magically gotten out and unplugged it and it’s ready to go.”
And as for the charging station itself, there’s no harm done.
“One of the purposes of the product is that the rear side stays on the charger, so when it hits the ground, it doesn’t damage the actual charger,” said Vega.
So, until electric vehicle companies create their own technology to keep you from being stuck, this device can be a solution.
“We just feel like we’re offering a really great solution to people to just walk away from a bad situation if one were to arise,” said Richards. “I feel safer — I know that I have that option. I don’t have to hope that someone will come to my rescue or pray that the police will be there in time.”
Once you use the EVject to break away from a charging station, you can’t use it again if it breaks. You can send your broken one back to the company and they’ll send you a new one for free.