It’s been said a progressive is someone who can be persuaded to touch a hot stove twice. They have such faith in their ideology, they believe reality will obey their preferences.
Emily Dreibelbis, a graduate student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, recently did an admirable thing. She put her progressive beliefs to the test, and honestly shared the less-than-stellar results. However, she ended up still endorsing her fantasy, as opposed to learning from the experience.
Dreibelbis made a road trip from Princeton, New Jersey, to Arlington, Virginia, and back in an electric car. The difficulties and frustrations she encountered showed her the drawbacks of electric vehicles and proved to her that now was not the time for her to buy one.
As reported in NJ.com, Dreibelbis borrowed her parents’ 2019 Chevrolet Bolt for the trip. The 200-mile trip there was troubled by scarce, broken and slow electric vehicle charging stations.
At one rest stop in Maryland, three chargers failed, and even the one that worked had an out-of-order message on its screen.
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When they function, a Level 3 “fast” charger takes about an hour to give the battery a 100-mile range.
Others are slower: a Level 1 plug for home outlets can take up to 10 hours, and a Level 2, found in public parking lots, can take up to four hours — if a charger can even be located. That turned out to be the next hurdle.
When she was trying to charge up in Arlington, Google directed Dreibelbis to a charger that turned out to be inaccessible, as it was in a private condominium complex. Then Google sent her to a public garage that charged $11 for entry. “Frustrated, I surrendered the money. They only had Level Two chargers, so it took two and a half hours of reading a book in the cold until the car had enough power,” she wrote.
On the way back to her parents’ home, she barely made it.
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“Thirty minutes from my house, a ‘Low Battery – Charge Vehicle Soon’ message surfaced. Confident in the 40 miles of buffer on top of what I needed to get home, I continued.
“But the cold December weather was draining the battery faster than I anticipated. Fifteen minutes later, the warning message upgraded to a mysterious ‘PROPULSION POWER IS REDUCED.’ Then, just one mile from home, the final blow: ‘OUT OF ENERGY, CHARGE VEHICLE NOW.’”
After some deliberation with her parents over the phone about whether to try calling for a tow truck on Christmas Eve, Dreibelbis decided to keep driving. It was a white-knuckle finish, but she managed to limp home.
This trip occurred in some of the most heavily populated blue regions of the country. If she encountered such maintenance and availability obstacles there, imagine the problems flyover country would experience.
Dreibelbis decided, “I’m not ready to put my own money down for one. I’d like to see the states use the federal funding as a proof point that stress-free EV trips are possible, even if for only a segment of the population to start. Until then, I’ll be watching – and waiting – to join the future of driving.”
She did not think through the practical implications of what her trip showed her. America is nowhere near ready to switch over to the limited abilities and high costs of electric cars.
The elites have decided electric cars are going to be our enforced future.
Joe Biden said as much when he talked about the catastrophic gas prices his policies have caused. He bragged about the pain of high energy prices as part of “an incredible transition” to an impractical utopian scheme, where renewable energy powers the world.
The goal is for 50 percent of car sales to be electric by 2030. In 2021, four and a half percent of car sales were electric. There’s a long way to go, and for what purpose?
Left out of the equation of these supposed carbon savings is where the electricity comes from in the first place to power the cars: fossil fuels. Generating enough electricity for America’s transportation needs would strain the power grids and even increase pollution.
Another negative factor is how long it takes to charge an electric car. Even the fastest (and most expensive) charging stations take an hour to charge even the limited-range electric car batteries have.
Can you imagine being on a trip, waiting in line for an hour for every car in front of you to charge, before you get the chance?
It’s impossible to meet the energy needs of the United States with electric vehicles. We do not have the resources to convert our modes of transportation on such an immense scale. It seems like a plan designed to cause suffering and collapse, rather than improvements.
Still, Dreibelbis felt compelled to pledge her enduring commitment to the leftist cause. In her mind, more government spending, also known as taxpayer money, will ultimately provide the infrastructure to support her virtue signaling.
“Despite it all, I remain an EV supporter. There’s just something to the smooth ride of a battery-powered car, and the miracle of transportation without emissions,” Dreibelbis stated.
She must not know about extra emissions “green” cars cause, as tires are worn down by the immense battery weight.
Dreibelbis would touch that hot stove again, causing even more pollution, wasting time, squandering money and replacing an efficient system with a less effective one, all for an illusion of “progress.”
