I just got back from a family vacation in Hawaii. We had never been there before, and it was a lovely time.

As a part of our trip, we spent two days on the “Big Island” and I really wanted to see flowing lava, if at all possible. The day we arrived, we went on an organized tour of Volcanos National Park. When we were there, we saw Kilauea smoking and steaming profusely. Nearby park rangers told us that it could erupt at any moment. We waited in eager anticipation, but it never happened, and we needed to get going.

I watched the US Geological Survey live stream on YouTube to continue to monitor the situation. I woke up the next morning to find that it had started erupting overnight.

We had some pre-arranged plans first thing in the morning, but right after that, we all agreed to make a beeline to the volcano.

This time, we weren’t on an organized tour, but in our own rented vehicle from Turo. I had booked a minivan several weeks earlier, but the prior day, the owner told me that it had broken down. I looked through the app for any vehicle that could fit us, and I found a Tesla Model X available for rent.

I hadn’t ever driven one of those before, but I thought it would be fun. After all, we were on vacation.

Those who know me well know that I’m a bit of a luddite when it comes to vehicle technology. I’m one of those odd balls who prefers a manual transmission for my daily driver. Yep, I’m that guy.

First impressions

The falcon wing doors were sweet. It reminded me of a Back-to-the-Future Delorean. It was awesome. The kids thought it was pretty cool too.

Everyone sat down, and I got into the driver’s seat. The first thing I looked for was a start button. I figured it wouldn’t have a keyed ignition, but really expected to find a start button. Seeing none, I pulled up my phone and Googled, “How to start a Tesla Model X.” The answer? You don’t. You just start driving.

Okay, that was weird, but good enough.

The next thing I planned to do was pair my phone with CarPlay, for navigation and music. I poked around on the large display for a while and didn’t see anything obvious. Once again, I Googled it only to find that the car didn’t support CarPlay. Bummer. Okay, Bluetooth it is, and I guess I’ll use the built-in nav. No biggie. Let’s get going.

I plugged Volcanos National Park into the nav and hit the road. My first impression of driving was pretty good. I found it to be a fairly smooth ride, with one exception: It didn’t coast. I was either accelerating or passively braking. It really bugged me, but obviously, I didn’t Google it, as I was now driving, so I just dealt with it.

After we were on our way for a bit, the thought occurred to me that we may or may not have enough battery to make the round trip. I sort of wondered. I watched the battery indicator tick down a percentage every few minutes. This was a new kind of anxiety that I never really experienced before.

I’ve heard EV owner talks about range anxiety, and this was my first bout with it.

I honestly didn’t expect for it to be an issue, because, I’m literally on an island. I can’t really go that far. I figured this thing could easily go the distance for a day’s drive, but of course, I was wrong.

The anxiety built, but I had no ability to research the topic because I was driving. I asked my son in the back seat to use ChatGPT to interpret the range messages on the screen. They didn’t make sense to me.

He gave me the verdict: We were about 10% short of making the round-trip to the Volcano. Bummer.

Then it occurred to me that I’m really going to get the full experience. I’m going to have to charge this sucker. Okay, where do I do that? I sort of figured that the Tesla would be smart enough to just tell me where I should charge, but I think that only works with official Tesla Superchargers, and there weren’t any of those on my route.

Once again, I asked my son to Google where the chargers were. He found one on the way. We plugged that into the nav as a stop and felt like we were good to go.

When I pulled up to the charger, I expected to experience something close to the familiar experience of a gas pump. You know, put in a card, get the power cord, plug it in, push a button, and wait a while. I was way off!

First of all, there was already another Tesla attached to it, and unlike a normal gas pump, the driver wasn’t at his car.

Fortunately, he showed up within a few minutes, and I had the charger all to myself. Great. Now what… What proceeded from here was the most frustrating 20 minutes of my entire vacation:

1. Where’s the socket on the car? I was looking around for a gas-door looking thing and didn’t see anything. My wife helped me out and pressed on the tail light lens. Boom there it was. That was sneaky. Kind reminded me of those old cars that had the gas cap hidden behind the license plate, way back in the day.
2. I grabbed the charger cord and lined it up to the socket, and it wasn’t a match. Not even close. Great. I bet there’s an adapter somewhere. I looked in the back seats and the trunk. Nothing.
3. I pulled up the Turo app and messaged the owner. He was quick to respond and told me it was in the frunk. That’s right. I forgot about that. Cool. So, I proceeded to open the driver’s door and look for the hood release lever under the steering column. Not there. Grrr.
4. I Googled it and found it by navigating the extensive menu system. It’s under “controls.”
5. Okay. I got everything plugged in. I expected to put in my credit card and start charging this thing, but no, that would be too easy.
6. I had to download the app for the charging station, create an account, type in my credit card number, and scan the QR code of the pump.
7. Even after all of that, it didn’t work! I tried it several different times, in several different ways. I even had my kids double-check my work, as I was pretty frustrated by this point, but they couldn’t make it charge either.
8. My son who found the charger then explained to me that it only has 2.6 stars on Google and most of the comments said that it doesn’t work.
9. About this time, we checked the USGS live stream and found out that the volcano had stopped erupting…
10. I needed a moment.

I don’t know about you, but when I’ve singularly focused on a goal, I can get really determined and locked in. I don’t just pivot on a dime. I need to give myself at least 60 seconds to process through the five stages of grief. Probably 120 seconds.

1. It didn’t really stop. Let me reload the video. Let me check another camera feed.
2. How could it stop?!?! We are so close!!!
3. Maybe if we still go, we can see a trickle of lava. <checks more feeds> Nope it looks as cold and dead as yesterday.
4. Why is this happening to me?!?
5. Fine. Let’s go get a soda for the drive home. At least I can stop fighting with this stupid charger, because I have enough battery range to get home.

We drove it back with 14% battery to spare. As a part of the rental agreement, I didn’t need to return it charged.

The leadership lesson

As a tech leader it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I love adopting new technology. For the most part, technology obeys my every command. I can figure things out. I rarely get stumped.

I had a nice long lava-less drive home to contemplate my experience. Here’s what I think happened:

I can pick on Tesla a bit. I can also pick on the maker of the charging station too. There were some mistakes made, in my humble opinion.

Humans need continuity. We can adopt change, but it helps if it’s incremental in nature, and at least somewhat familiar.

Why do we all type on a qwerty keyboard? The keys were lined up this way so they wouldn’t jam on a mechanical typewriter. It’s not a particularly efficient layout, but it’s familiar, so it works.

Why is Microsoft Windows so entrenched? Is it the best operating system? Not necessarily, but Microsoft always focused a lot on maximizing backwards compatibility and maintaining continuity with the past. We’ve had a start button since 1995. That’s 30 years of consistency. Tesla just decided they didn’t need a start button, even though every other car has one or a keyed ignition.

As technologists, we always need to remember that we are designing our technologies for real people. People aren’t blank slates. They have a baseline of expectations from prior experiences that probably don’t have any modern rationale, but they still matter. If you think about my usability frustrations, most of them weren’t because it was an EV. They were mostly because the EV experience was too complicated and disconnected from my baseline decades of ICE experience.

And of course, this has a real bottom line impact. I will be highly unlikely to purchase a Tesla Model X as my next car.

In fact, I had the opportunity to rent another car later in the trip. I got a gloriously boring 2019 Honda Odyssey. It was amazingly unremarkable, but a completely useful and uneventful experience.

Disruptive technology

Technology can be disruptive in more than one way. Often the disruptions we inflict upon unsuspecting end users can be avoided. This is a usability and design problem, not just an engineering problem. And of course, in the end, it’s a business problem.

We can change the world with our technology innovations, but it won’t happen without the willing participation of our beloved end users. Let’s always keep them top of mind.

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