Seattle talk show host Jason Rantz recently rented an electric vehicle and ended up stranded in the middle of a freezing cold Washington night when his rental ran out of juice as he searched for a charging station.
The incident revealed some of the many major problems inherent in driving an electric car, all of which show that EVs simply aren’t ready for prime time in the U.S., especially for moderate to long-distance driving.
The conservative KTTH host’s brutal trip seemed to have hit nearly every EV snag possible that frustrating night.
Rantz described the disaster in a piece published Tuesday by Fox News.
Ranz wrote that he does not own a car and rented an EV from Hertz to attend a wedding about 90 minutes east of Seattle. He didn’t rent the EV by choice, he wrote. He had reserved a gas-powered vehicle, but the company had rented it out and had no replacement, he wrote. He was stuck with an EV whether he wanted one or not.
His first realization was when he quickly learned about “range anxiety” as he found himself nervously glancing at the battery power gauge time and again as he drove.
But he was not expecting road conditions to also contribute to his worries.
“I was nearly glued to the dashboard, watching a dwindling battery percentage. Just when I thought everything would be OK, I encountered hills. EV batteries do not like hills,” he wrote.
Once he reached his destination, his battery gauge told him he only had 43 miles left before needing a charge, but his return trip to Seattle would require double that.
Would you ever buy an electric vehicle?
“From the vows to the post-ceremony dinner, I was panicked, downloading apps that mapped out the nearest EV power stations, hoping I could make this work,” he wrote.
Unfortunately, the only charging station he could locate that would suit the model of car he’d rented was 30 miles away. And that was cutting it awfully close.
As he set out for the station, he watched the power gauge anxiously, but soon found that the car was misleading him on how far he could actually go. And then disaster struck when he missed a turn.
“Pro-tip: when driving an EV, do not make any mistakes,” he wrote, “like missing a poorly lit off-ramp to your plug-in station on a highway where the next opportunity to get off and head back is two miles away (and two miles back), when your battery has only about one mile left to give.”
“I was forced to pull over, cruising to a stop in the middle of nowhere. The battery had died as I was pulling off the freeway. Moments later, the lights and heat went out. It was pitch black and about 30 degrees.”
Then things got worse. When he called a tow truck company, he was at first told that a $300 tow would be to him in 20 minutes, only to be told after 45 minutes that the tow had been canceled, Rantz wrote. And there were two hours of dealing with Hertz’s customer service, which was absolutely no help at all, Rantz wrote.
The talk show host ended up calling an Uber and telling Hertz that its electric car was sitting dead on the side of the road.
“A driver named Hussein took pity on me and agreed to pick me up. He couldn’t arrive soon enough. My cell phone battery hit 13%, and, as with my EV, I had nowhere to plug it in,” Rantz wrote.
“When the Uber arrived, I abandoned the EV. It was now Hertz’s problem. I got home, $108.91 later (plus a generous tip). This is your future in the Democrats’ EV world.”
The problem is the technology and infrastructure of EVs simply isn’t where Democrats and EV boosters want them to be. And when it comes to infrastructure, it’s not likely to be here soon, Rantz wrote.
“In Washington state, relatively straightforward transit projects take years and are always over budget. Does anyone think any state can install the hundreds of thousands of charging stations needed for an hours-long ride?” he wrote.
“Even the large urban areas with Democrat-controlled government aren’t installing charging stations at large scale. And can we even afford it? Washington State is spending $41 million to install just over 180 charging stations. As of September 23, the state only had 1,820 charging stations. Is the technology advanced enough that the current charging stations, with clunky and heavy plugs, will not need a major upgrade within the next decade?”
“The battery technology isn’t where it needs to be to make EVs worthwhile, and the prices aren’t low enough for most families to comfortably purchase (you can thank Bidenomics for that). Yet Democrats continue to force EVs on us,” Rantz wrote.
“Even if the infrastructure existed, our power grids couldn’t handle it.”
