Even far-left ABC News admits that electric vehicle owners face a “logistical nightmare” when it comes to everyday use, not to mention long drives.
A piece written by Morgan Korn tries to make it sound as though His Fraudulency Joe Biden is some sort of savior with his goal of “installing 500,000 new chargers across the U.S. and dramatically boosting EV sales by 2030,” but that’s not going to solve a lot of the problems. In fact, while critical of the current situation for electric vehicles, this article fails to mention all the “logistical nightmares” electric vehicle owners face.
Korn writes:
YouTube personality Steve Hammes leased a Hyundai Kona Electric sport utility vehicle for his 17-year-old daughter Maddie for three reasons: it was affordable, practical and allowed Maddie to put her cash toward college, not fuel. Now, the upstate New York resident has a dilemma many EV owners can relate to: finding available charging stations far away from home.
“We’re going through the planning process of how easily Maddie can get from Albany to Gettysburg [College] and where she can charge the car,” Hammes told ABC News. “It makes me a little nervous. We want fast chargers that take 30 to 40 minutes — it would not make sense to sit at a Level 2 charger for hours. There isn’t a good software tool that helps EV owners plan their trips.”
The gold standard in electric vehicles is the Tesla, and Tesla is also the gold standard in offering reliable chargers everywhere. Still, this gold standard is not all that golden. You can be in and out of a gas station in five minutes. Hell, you can fill your gas tank and rob the gas station in five minutes. Gas stations are awesome for the outlaw and law-abiding alike.
In the best of conditions, if you can find a Tesla supercharger, 200 miles of range takes 15 minutes to 23 minutes to charge. A fill-up takes an hour. And don’t forget that cold weather or turning on your air conditioning/heat will eat up those 200 miles pretty quick.
Fifteen minutes might not sound like a long time, but have you ever had to wait five minutes to access the gas pump? It sucks. Imagine 15 minutes. Oh, and what if someone is ahead of you in line? Then it’s not 15 minutes? Then it’s 20, 25, or 30 minutes. And that’s the gold standard.
If you don’t own a Tesla, your charging time is much longer, and there are fewer available chargers. One electric car expert told ABC he “frequently hears complaints of dead chargers and sticky cables.”
Get a load of this:
Tony Quiroga, editor-in-chief of Car and Driver, has been forced to wander the aisles of a Walmart in Burbank, California, while the EV he’s testing that day sits and charges. He’s become a familiar face at a Mexican restaurant in Mohave, California, where a Tesla charger is located. A coffee shop recently opened nearby that caters specifically to EV drivers.
That’s an expert with a Tesla. If anyone should have the system gamed out, it’s that guy.
What ABC fails to mention are the battery fires and the stories leaking out that, in some cases, it’s cheaper per mile to run a gas-powered car than an electric car.
Oh, and then there’s my favorite omission from these stories: the fact that electric vehicles are not saving the planet. The electricity they run on is almost exclusively produced by burning fossil fuels.
The whole idea is a ruse, ridiculous.
If you only use the car to go back and forth to work, that’s great. But if you are in a situation where you need to charge along the way, it sounds awful and expensive and stressful.
If we ever get to a point where you can charge the vehicle in a few minutes and these charging stations are as easy to find as gas stations, that will be great. But…
You’re still not saving the planet, pal.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.