It turned out that the handle had compressed the eyeball in and pushed it up in the socket (think about squeezing a rubber ball), but it remained attached.
Attaching appliances to a power socket via a smart plug containing sensors and a ZigBee transceiver allows information about the appliances' power consumption to be beamed automatically to a broadband router within the home, and thence to a web server located elsewhere.
This isn't the defunct EV1 we're talking about here, nor some of those other models we've heard about before, this is the Phoenix Motorcars electric SUV, which can be plugged into a wall socket and recharged with the same plug that powers your garden party boombox.