EV Charging Nightmare: Elderly Couple’s VW Gets Stuck Behind Walmart

While I don't have one, I think electric vehicles are pretty damn cool and have come a long way in a short period of time.

Still, I'm endlessly fascinated by some of their impracticalities.

I stumbled across a new one I had never realized was a thing, and it happened to an elderly couple in Alabama.

Did you realize your car could get welded to a charger and leave you stuck behind a Walmart for hours?

Well, thanks to a great article from The Autopian's Jason Torchinsky, I know this, and you're about to, too.

 According to Torchinsky's piece, Javene Martin was road-tripping with her 79-year-old husband to a medical appointment. Along the way, they decided to stop for a charge in Athens, Ala.

Now, here's where these impracticalities of EV life come in. The only place in town to charge their car was an Electrify America station behind a Walmart. There, the Martins planned to plug their Volkswagen ID.4 into a "hyper-fast" or "ultra" charger, and in 30 to 45 minutes, they'd be on their merry way.

You didn't misread that. "Hyper-fast" will have you back on the road in half an hour.

Again, I think EVs are neat, but this is indefensible. At a gas station, you just squirt some dinosaur juice in your 2022 Kia Forte, and you're back on the road in minutes.

Unfortunately, the Martins wish they could've split in 45 minutes. This is because almost as soon as they started charging, there was an issue when the charging status light turned red almost immediately.

"I found the emergency release in the back of the car," Martin said, "but it wouldn’t budge. I thought maybe because I was a 73-year-old woman and just not able to pull it hard enough, but it just wouldn’t release."

An elderly couple in Alabama had a nightmare experience trying to charge their Volkswagen ID.4 behind a Walmart. (Photo by Jens Schlueter/Getty Images)

That's because the charger malfunctioned and quite literally welded its prongs to the inside of the Martins' charging socket. While there are safeguards to make sure this doesn't happen… it still can.

The Martins wound up stuck behind Walmart, calling Electrify America and even the VW dealership where they bought the car, until this very modern automotive conundrum was solved by a tech – who came from hours away and was held up even longer by a problem with the work order – wielding one of the simplest tools there is: a crowbar.

Man, what a nightmare. 

Every time I hear stories like this, I understand more and more why people are still keen to hang onto their good ol' fashioned internal combustion engine.