A Tesla Supercharger for Smartphones?!

[Crinkly wrapper plastic sounds] Tesla, the electric car company, has a fairlyunique lineup of branding accessories. Yeah, they have the normal hats, shirts, andmugs, but also this desktop supercharger for cell phones. Costing $45, I had to buy it so we could takea closer look. Let’s get started. [Intro] A supercharger is a place where electric carscan go to charge up really fast. Tesla says this is an exact miniature replicaof the life sized versions.They use the same 3D CAD data file from thelife sized superchargers to make the desktop cellphone version, precisely replicating everydetail, curve and surface. Unfortunately there are no instructions ordiagrams in the box, so we’re just going to have to wing this one. Initially I thought that this $45 accessoryhad some tech inside of it, but judging by the lightweight and lack of documentation,I’m starting to think I was mistaken. The white and red surface are both made fromplastic.The red lettering is not inlay-ed over thesurface like the Tesla key card. The plastic is actually built deep into thecharger, like we saw on the Nintendo Switch buttons. Each of the red lettering is it’s own solidchunk of plastic pretty quality stuff. The silver side rails are made from metal. [Scratching metal sounds.] It’s the same on both sides. Down at the bottom of the supercharger wehave a strip of double sided tape, probably for mounting on a desk since this is a desktopcharger. But there’s still no sign of technology. The bottom gray plastic pops off after a briefstruggle. And then the top white slab of plastic isalso able to come loose, revealing a whole lot of nothing inside.It turns out this whole thing is essentiallyjust a model of a supercharger, and interestingly enough, even at that $45 price point, it stillmakes you supply your own charging cable. I have an extra braided cable lying around,so I’ll wrap this inside the contraption. It has a little indention up at the top wherethe tip of the cable can rest inside and keep it from falling out. In hindsight, a thinner non-braided cablewould be easier to work with and probably fit better inside the housing.You can see how thick the red letters arethat poke through the top outer white shell. And the same thing goes for the other sidewith the red plastic resting inside for the back lettering. It’s cool that Tesla went the extra mile forthis plastic molding, and didn’t just slap some red vinyl stickers on top. Thumbs up for the quality. But that’s also probably why this thing costsso much. I’ll wrap the cable around this plastic knoblike we saw on the Nintendo Classic controllers, and then run it through the metal side railsdown to the bottom of the supercharger. The metal rails have slits cut into the bottomthat orient and hold it tight when the plastic halves are in place. The top of the white plastic slides in andclips down.And the gray bottom piece of plastic has toslide over the whole charging cable and clips on to the end, holding things tight…kindof like the cap on a stick of Old Spice. They look almost the same. It works though, as long as the other endof the charging cable is plugged into the wall, it’ll charge my phone. It’s a rather interesting decoration. It’s supercharging powers are homeopathic,maybe that’s why it didn’t come with any documentation. But hey, it looks sweet and I’m down to supporta company that I think is pretty cool, even if it’s only supercharging my quick chargewith the placebo effect. If you want one of these overpriced plasticmodels of your own, I’ll leave a link for them in the video description.And also, Tesla just brought back their referralprogram, so if you end up buying an actual Tesla with my link in the description, weboth get 1,000 miles of free supercharging, so thanks for that. I’m probably going to take my charging cordout and just put this thing on a shelf for decoration somewhere. Come hang out with me on Twitter and Instagram. And thanks a ton for watching. I’ll see you around..

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