Responding To The Washington Post Hatchet Job On Electric Cars & Winter Driving – CleanTechnica
Last week, hundreds of motorists on I-95 in Virginia were stuck for hours when a blizzard closed the highway south of Washington, DC. Highway crews couldn’t spread ice-melting chemicals before the storm arrived because the rain that preceded it would have washed them away. But when temperatures dropped, the rain quickly turned to ice. Then the snow came and made the ice treacherously slippery. Tractor trailers trying to get off the highway lost control, blocking many exit ramps. Senator Tim Kaine was trapped in the tangled mess of stalled cars for 27 hours.
Afterwards, Charles Lane, an editorial writer and columnist for the Washington Post, wrote a blistering opinion piece entitled, “Imagine Virginia’s Icy Traffic Catastrophe — But With Only Electric Vehicles.” In it, he wails about the Tesla driver who banged on the door of a tractor trailer, begging for help because he was afraid his family might freeze to death if his battery ran out of power. “If everyone had been driving electric vehicles, this mess could well have been worse,” Lane writes.
He goes on to say even Tesla warns on its website the cold temperatures can reduce range. Charging a cold battery takes longer, and besides, he says, there aren’t that many charging stations anyway. And what happens if the power goes out? What then? Lane, a graduate of Yale law school, apparently lacks the mental capacity to realize that when the power goes out, gas pumps stop working as well.
Then Lane gets down to his main point. “All else being equal, though, cars and trucks with internal combustion engines (ICE) would have the advantage in coping with a sudden challenge such as the I-95 fiasco. It is much easier to rehabilitate a disabled ICE vehicle. Rescuers can deliver gallons of gas in convenient jugs; gas stations are still far more numerous than EV charging stations; and ICE car batteries can be jump-started in minutes. Absent some breakthrough in mobile charging technology, out-of-juice EVs in out-of-the-way places will need a tow. If Monday’s nightmare had been an all-electric affair, they might have littered the highway for miles.”
That’s true, Charles, just as conventional cars that ran out of gas littered the highway for miles and had to be towed. What a jumped up jackass you are, sir! If you are wondering how such an ignorant stooge gets to publish his poisonous ideas, consider this from his Washington Post bio: “He is a … frequent panelist on Fox News’s Special Report and Fox News Sunday.” Oh, Fox News. Sure, now there’s a bastion of journalistic excellence for you. Did you notice how Lane took a deliberate swipe at Tesla? Shameful.
You Can’t Handle The Truth!
User TheGadgetGuy1 on the Tesla Lounge forum decided to test Charles Lane’s whacko theories. So he did a little experiment with his Model X. Here’s what he found:
The Scenario
- My Model X was fully preconditioned prior to the start of the test</…….
