The Patriot Post® · Energy Secretary's Not-So-Excellent EV Adventure

Summer road trips are always an experience, as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm just found out. Granholm set off on a four-day excursion in an attempt to promote the ease, convenience, and necessity of electric vehicles (EVs). She had an entire entourage of EVs with her, including the Cadillac Lyriq, a Ford F-150, and a Chevy Bolt. What she didn’t quite account for was all the extra planning and thinking she had to do to make this trip feasible. Even with all the help she had at her fingertips, the trip wasn’t exactly a model vacation.

NPR sent a correspondent on the trip with Granholm to detail the journey. While documenting the trip, Camila Domonoske couldn’t help giving away important details that immediately undermined the purpose of the road trip — to be an EV advertisement. What was alluded to but not explicitly mentioned is that, along with their entourage of electric vehicles, there was also an advanced team of gas-powered cars used to ensure rescue and assuage other logistical concerns they had with their EVs. But even with NPR’s guaranteed leftist slant, it was hard to gloss over what happened next.

Granholm’s biggest hiccup happened just as she was traveling through Grovetown near Augusta, Georgia. Granholm and her team needed to stop for a fast charge, and her gas-powered advanced team encountered a major problem. The charging stations were almost full, so one of the team members used their non-electric vehicle to save the last free charging station for the energy secretary.

Along came a family on a road trip who also had planned a stop at this station. They noticed the gas car in the only free electric charging station. It was a hot day, they had an infant in the car, and their car was quickly losing charge. The injustice of being edged out of a station because of a gas car was deeply frustrating. So frustrating, in fact, that the family called the cops. Unfortunately for the family, there was nothing the police could do, so they were forced to wait. Granholm’s team eventually did some juggling, including sending the other EVs in the entourage to other, slower charging stations so that the family could charge their EV.

This ironic situation and very bad PR for the energy secretary was the icing on the cake of a frustrating road trip.

NPR’s reporter admits, “EVs that aren’t Teslas have a road trip problem.” That is probably being kind. Really, all EVs aren’t the practical road-trip choice. EVs have a logistical, infrastructure, charging speed, cost, and overall practicality problem.

On a side note, it was definitely a political snub on the part of the energy secretary not to use a Tesla as one of her road-trip cars. As Hot Air’s David Strom points out: “Teslas are … the cars that are easiest to charge, with a far more plentiful and reliable charging network. As with everything else Granholm does[,] politics trumped practicality.”

The planning that goes into a road trip with an EV is ridiculous. In spite of apps that should help locate a charging station on the fly, there is a lot more thought needed when picking one. You need to make sure there is a charging station within the EV’s driving radius. Then you need to make sure it’s the speed-charging station you need: 20-30 mins (fast) or 3-5 hours (slow). Then you have to make sure the location is compatible with your needs. Fast charging is preferable near a restaurant, and slow charging is preferable near a hotel. This is going backwards vis-à-vis all the advances that we have made in road-tripping with gas vehicles — you plug in your destination and there are easy gas stops all along the way.

Moreover, we don’t really have the infrastructure to support a high volume of EVs on the road. There aren’t enough charging stations or units at the stations. EV owners occasionally report encountering a charger that won’t work, causing more delays, frustrations, and anxieties.

Then there’s the impracticality of having to make long stops for recharging. Even having to stop 30 minutes for a fast charge is slow when compared to stopping at a gas pump.

Not only that, but charging an EV is still more expensive than pumping gas. According to Business Insider: “Charging any of these vehicles at home will run about $12.62 per 100 miles while fueling one at a gas station may run about $11.08. That difference, while not incredibly substantial, may add up — and when these drivers go to a public charging station, they’re likely to pay about $16.10 per 100 miles.”

NPR’s accounting of cost is vague and not specific, probably to make it a selling point. Only one of the vehicles in the entourage saved money, and it’s unclear if that was only on one leg of the journey or more consistently throughout. Travel cost is a very important consideration for most American families.

Perhaps the biggest hiccup of all for the “green” electric vehicles is that, ultimately, they aren’t cutting carbon emissions. Those charging stations are run by electricity, and electricity is primarily produced by carbon-emitting plants (mostly because ecofascists are against carbon-free nuclear power). The more electric needs there are, the more electric plants are going to be needed to provide enough electricity.

The “green technology” of electric vehicles doesn’t match the hype of climate activist politicians like Secretary Granholm. It is not close to where it needs to be to present a positive, practical, and energy-efficient means of transportation. If having the cops called on Granholm didn’t illustrate that fact, the other inconveniences of the trip should have.

Another point that should indicate to the “green energy”-pushing politicians that they’re doing it wrong is that they feel like they have to sell it to the American people. If the tech were practical and improved the lives of everyday Americans, they would buy it unsolicited. That’s how cars gained prevalence in the first place over horses and buggies. The fact is that green energy caters to ecofascism’s “god of the gaps.” The bogeyman of climate change is rooted in a people-last agenda, and that’s always going to be a difficult sell to a discerning public.