A fascinating thing we’ll all have to navigate as electric vehicles become more mainstream is charging station etiquette, as our own David Tracy recently encountered himself. But I think any reasonable person would agree it’s not cool to deliberately block an EV charging station with a gas car. Extra not cool? When a cabinet-level government official does it for a photo-op.
We dive into that as I return to morning roundup duty this week with news about the recent Munich and upcoming Detroit auto shows; the potential United Auto Workers strike that looms over the latter; and Germany has a fascinating solution to the problem I describe above. Happy Monday, let’s get started.
Jennifer Granholm Gets Heat For EV Road Trip ICE-Ing
America, we're listening. With historic investments in our electric vehicle manufacturing supply chain, the Biden-Harris Administration is investing billions to make EVs more affordable and practical.
Check out our NEW EV Investment map and more: https://t.co/isXXrfVDGg pic.twitter.com/iCGxhsSgXY
— Secretary Jennifer Granholm (@SecGranholm) July 6, 2023
Here at The Autopian, even though we believe cars and politics (policy, more specifically) are inextricably linked, we’re not in the tank for any political party or ideology. We’re pro-car, pro-cat and pro-good engineering solutions. That’s why I have no issues with calling shenanigans on something that happened during Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm’s recent EV road trip.
In a story framed around the usual “electric charging is still bad!” angle, NPR — who rode along with Granholm — reports on a drive that she and her staff did from Charlotte to Memphis (which is nine hours, or as we call it in Texas, “a quick trip to the HEB for a sixer of Lone Star and That Green Sauce”) in a caravan of EVs. But it’s not that simple, because, per NPR, this happened:
But between stops, Granholm’s entourage at times had to grapple with the limitations of the present. Like when her caravan of EVs — including a luxury Cadillac Lyriq, a hefty Ford F-150 and an affordable Bolt electric utility vehicle — was planning to fast-charge in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, Georgia.
Her advance team realized there weren’t going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy.
In politics, the job of the “advance team” is to clear any such obstacles for the VIP in question. But I think we’d all agree is a shitty move. In doing so, you’d block some driver who needs to get electrons—and if they’re doing it at a fast charger, they have somewhere to be, vs. the folks who can slow-charge when they’re shopping or seeing a movie or something. And that’s exactly what happened, according to NPR.
In fact, a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset they decided to get the authorities involved: They called the police.
What the hell, man!
The sheriff’s office couldn’t do anything. It’s not illegal for a non-EV to claim a charging spot in Georgia. Energy Department staff scrambled to smooth over the situation, including sending other vehicles to slower chargers, until both the frustrated family and the secretary had room to charge.
At least one Granholm critic likened this situation, correctly, to an episode of VEEP; now I’m wondering if this was more of a Richard Splett move or a Jonah Ryan move. Either way, Granholm’s getting plenty of criticism for this, particularly from the right, and if this Reuters report is accurate, I don’t think it’s undeserved, actually. The Biden Administration’s top officials are under a lot of pressure to paint a rosy picture of EV adoption amid his various pro-electrification initiatives, and that was probably the goal of this road trip. But it’s also being used as more ammo against EVs, which are increasingly a political punching bag ahead of the next election.
As pro-EV as I am, I don’t think sugar-coating the situation is helping anything here; our charging situation sucks, period. My recent road trip from New York to Martha’s Vineyard in a BMW iX (my wife and I like to do Fancy Person Cosplay once or twice a year) worked out mainly because that car has a nearly 400-mile range; every fast charger we encountered, every single one, was either broken or running at partial speeds.
At least Granholm’s being realistic about the challenges here. And as that story notes, they never got stranded, a risk that many early EV adopters had:
Where chargers are in short supply, drivers sometimes have to wait — like Granholm’s team did in Grovetown, Georgia. The experience could get even worse as the number of electric vehicles on the road increases in coming years.
“Clearly, we need more high-speed chargers, particularly in the South,” Granholm told me at the end of her trip.
Hopefully, the companies that make them can step up. And to their credit and out of fairness, I do believe the Biden Administration is doing a lot to tackle pollution, stimulate battery and EV technology growth here so we don’t get rolled by China and lay the groundwork for a future with less gas use. I just don’t think they should be in the habit of ICE-ing folks out of charging spots.
Germany Mandates EV Charging At Gas Stations
I gotta tell you, though. I was just in Europe and I’m amazed by the degree to which they’re Not Screwing Around when it comes to climate stuff. You see the effects of that everywhere there, from hotel air conditioning to political signs and beyond. In Germany, the IAA Munich auto and mobility show was last week and it highlighted the many ways that nation’s car industry is crafting a lower-emission future—not always happily, mind you. But they seem to get the reality of what they’re facing more than we do.
So last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz unveiled a bold new regulation that would probably make Granholm jealous: a requirement that gas stations carry EV chargers, and fast ones too. Here’s Reuters:
Scholz said that the coming weeks will see Germany become “the first country in Europe to introduce a law requiring operators of 80% of all service stations to provide fast-charging options with at least 150 kilowatts for e-cars”.
It’s unclear what the timeline is, who pays for this—I have to assume incentives will drive it—or how it tracks with a previous goal unveiled in 2020. But I do think this is a good move. If you want to transition people to EV ownership, helping them maintain their similar habits and is a good way to do it, at least for now. I’m eager to see how this plays out.
IAA Munich Felt Like A Chinese Auto Show
IAA Munich felt like a big celebration of Germany’s auto industry, with huge activations throughout the city for all the big brands—BMW had this kind of EDM-festival vibe going in the center of town, and Mercedes erected this giant red glowing cube thing. Gas cars were there, but they were basically an afterthought. Nobody brought up the d-word. Everything was e-mobility, as they call it.
No wonder they need to do this with both barrels loaded. The Chinese automakers are coming and they’re coming in force. This was my first time seeing, in person, some offerings from BYD, XPeng and HiPhi. (The latter in particular looks like a Mobile Suit on wheels and I kind of love it.) I will tell you that China is not screwing around here and these cars, by all appearances anyway, seem extremely impressive; nobody’s making jokes about these cars.
Here’s the New York Times on the fear the Germans have about China kicking ass on their turf:
BYD, an all-electric Chinese carmaker that overtook Volkswagen as China’s best-selling brand this year, unveiled a sleek, new sedan and a sport utility vehicle to applause from a packed crowd.
“I think the Europeans are just pretty much petrified of how the Chinese will perform in Europe,” said Matthias Schmidt, an independent analyst of the electric-car market based in Berlin.
The show arrives at a precarious time for the German auto industry, the largest in Europe, and for the German economy more broadly. Once a critical driver of the country’s economy, German automakers have instead become a drag. In June, production in the auto industry shrank by 3.5 percent compared with the previous month, weighing on the country’s overall industrial production, which declined by 1.5 percent.
That, and energy prices skyrocketing with the war in Ukraine (a frequent topic of conversation everywhere I went) underscored the moment of transition we’re in. The German automakers already dropped the ball in China; they don’t want to lose ground back home.
The Detroit Auto Show And A Likely UAW Strike In The Same Week
Finally, speaking of auto shows, we have one here in America this week: the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, now in vastly warmer September instead of the frosty start of the year as it was for a long time. But this show won’t be the powerhouse news event it once was; in fact, it’s going to primarily be attended by the U.S. automakers (including Tesla, interestingly enough) and smaller in scale than in its glory days. The Autopian crew will be there during press days Wednesday and Thursday.
Which is also when the UAW’s contracts with the automakers expire, and Vegas odds put a strike as pretty likely at this point. Here’s The Detroit News:
Compensation for temporary/supplemental workers and the “tier two” workers at the Detroit Three automakers are a focus of the United Auto Workers’ demands for a new contract whose “deadline,” says UAW President Shawn Fain, is 11:59 p.m. Thursday. Without a tentative agreement in hand when the current contracts expire, those companies’ workers will go on strike, Fain said last week.
Addressing the conditions under which the company can use temps, decreasing the grow-in period to the top wage and securing the same retirement benefits for all workers are key pieces of what autoworkers see as alleviating concessions made during the Great Recession and the bankruptcies. They feel it’s time to win what was negotiated away after years of major and even record profits.
“We don’t want to tip the companies so that they’re in trouble,” said John McKissack, 53, of Brownstown Township, a 28-year UAW member and pipefitter at Stellantis NV’s Trenton Engine Complex. “We just want our fair share.”
Fain said he’s seeing progress but has called out the latest proposal from Stellantis, which is probably the least labor-friendly automaker in play here; he has a trash can labeled “Big Three Proposals” he uses as a prop during his many social media broadcasts about the situation.
Either way, this is about to be a really interesting auto industry week, and not because of new car debuts, necessarily.
Your Turn
What government policy would you like to see to cut emissions and move in a more Earth-friendly direction? I wish we were doing more to mandate turning more ICE cars into hybrids, but everyone but maybe Toyota and a few others deem dead-set on “skipping” that step.
“I gotta tell you, though. I was just in Europe and I’m amazed by the degree to which they’re Not Screwing Around when it comes to climate stuff. You see the effects of that everywhere there, from hotel air conditioning to political signs and beyond. In Germany, the IAA Munich auto and mobility show was last week and it highlighted the many ways that nation’s car industry is crafting a lower-emission future—not always happily, mind you. But they seem to get the reality of what they’re facing more than we do.”
Ah yes Germany, that country that a few years ago decided to get rid of all its climate friendly nuclear power in favor of buying cheap FF natural gas from Russia and when Russia stopped selling that cheap gas turned to burning more coal?
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1124448463/germany-coal-energy-crisis
‘Energy secretary does EV trip to prove a point, instead proves the naysayers right and inadvertently also proves a second point: holier-than-thou politicians are in fact *****.’ Still want an electric (Tesla) to commute in. Also still think the average American needs to keep their gas car. I know we will still have gas in the garage for awhile. Her ‘trip’ is one I make on one tank.
I know this might be a controversial take on a car site, but the best solution for both the planet and car enthusiasts is fewer cars. Investing in public transit and walkable, bikeable infrastructure will lead to a healthier, happier population, and will reduce transportation emissions significantly. No matter how efficient an EV is, a subway system is going to be a million times better for the environment, and will create a higher quality of life for everyone. I’m not just talking urban centers, either. Suburbs should be bikeable; you shouldn’t be forced to drive to a grocery store that’s only a few miles away. To top it all off, better urban planning and transit infrastructure will lead to less cars, and thus less traffic for those of us who enjoy driving.
They specifically excluded Tesla. It would have been a far better outcome if they weren’t so intentionally oblivious.
Anyone not mentioning nuclear is a clown and not serious about getting anywhere with electrics long term.
Preach all day about this little thing and that. Until nuke plants are all over and private jet and big unneeded global shipping is stopped, none of these other little solutions will do anything.
Government mandates that crush small business and make it impossible for poor people to build or ever own a home is NOT the solution.
Nuclear has its issues and they’re very real, but they’re not insurmountable. I agree we need to be building more, a lot more, but there’s no economic, political, or public pressure to do so. If anything, all three of those are applying resistance to the idea. I get that they’re crazy stupid expensive to build, would probably need to be subsidized by the government, and everyone is afraid of nuclear accidents making it political suicide to support, but they can create so many reliable baseline gigawatts without any carbon emissions which should be dismissed so easily.
Nukes are also an excellent source of green hydrogen. Why are we not doing this?
Whats needed here is a post advanced team team to undo whatever “preparations” the advanced team did.
Needlessly complicated? Yes. Redundant? Absolutely.
This IS government after all.
LEED certification for all building permits.
https://www.usgbc.org/leed
you paying for people to build a house? You people have no clue what these certificates add to costs. IN A HOUSING CRISIS. I am so sick of this shit. How about no more big ships and private jets first. Then fuck with the little people.
“What government policy would you like to see to cut emissions and move in a more Earth-friendly direction? ”
I have a few ideas…
First, I would copy Germany’s ‘every gas station must have fast BEV chargers’ and built in such a way that even a truck with a trailer could use it.
Second, I would mandate the phase out of all piston-engined lawn-care equipment… with 2-stroke leaf blowers being #1 on my kill list. Tied in with this… a set date that all lawn-care companies phase out the use of this equipment… and nasty fines if they are caught using them after that date.
I fucking hate 2 stroke leaf blowers.
Third, mandate that motorcycles have to meet the same emissions standards as cars. At the present, they currently don’t.
https://gearjunkie.com/motors/motorcycle-vs-vehicle-emissions
And I can say with first hand experience that I can smell the difference between driving behind a motorcycle vs a regular modern car or truck.
Though it just might make more sense to just phase out ICE motorcycles and mandate they all be electric sooner rather than trying to clean up their emissions.
Also part of my motivation for this is to send a big “Fuck You” to all the attention seeking people on bikes with loud unmuffled straight pipes.
If you need loud pipes to save your life it’s probably because you suck at riding and should stick to driving a car.
Fourth: I’m in Canada, so I wouldn’t have the power to do this… but if I did, I’d get rid of the fucking stupid CAFE Footprint Rule.
Preach!
Don’t forget summary execution for coal rollers effected by herds of rabid goats licking their ticklish parts.
Those poor goats 🙁
Fuck yeah, down with the leaf blowers!!!
What I really want to reduce emissions is the political will to really invest in a long term improvements in the rail system to reduce air travel. So for example, I live in Tucson, there should never be a commercial flight from here to Phoenix. That should be a quick train ride. Same Colorado Springs to Denver. These should also be electric with a big investment in renewables. If we can improve the efficiency of rail freight while we’re at it, so much the better.
Rail for sure. There are a ton of just asinine city pairs out of my local airport – just dozens of flights that are less than 200 miles and then the state pisses and moans about needing a new airport because we’re out of capacity.
“If we can improve the efficiency of rail freight while we’re at it, so much the better.”
Any suggestions?
Get rid of the footprint rule and the chicken tax, so really just repealing existing government policies instead of making new ones.
We CAN handle the truth ! Just so infrequently fed any.
The current and past automotive industry incentives lack vision.
The industry as a whole has gone rogue, and are side hustling our personal data, and ignoring basic personal property protection.
Human nature follows incentives. It is crucial that artificial incentives are exceptionally well constructed, and conceptually peer reviewed by the most knowledgeable.
The first incentive to be incinerated ;
Any public official is henceforth prohibited from profiteering in any way from;
1) Insider Information, and is banned from any individual stock holding while in office.
2) Lobbyists Influence that manifests in gifts of personal benefit.
3) Corporate Influence that manifests in gifts of personal benefit or job position guarantees.
( A fine of 3 times the benefit should suffice as a deterrent.)
Second incentive to be muted ;
Lobbyists are prohibited from running for office, and office holders are prohibited from taking a lobbyist job for at least a decade.
Lobbyists must disclose in documents the amount they are authorized to spend in promoting a cause, and must contribute three times the amount directly to the national debt before dollar one.
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/
You have to extend the policies to the public officials immediate family, extended family, neighbors, college buddies, business partners, etc. The network of those connected to and benefiting from officials is sickening.
Incentive programs if thought out wouldn’t have to be replaced every few years. Back in 2017 when we got our first EV, the RI state program ran out of money a few yrs prior and to my knowledge never replaced or refunded. Also for years I participated in a National Grid EV program where a data sucking device was plugged into my EV, thought some programs/discounts would come from it, never did, only got $50 to signup initially.
For 34 years of my career I served this country as a “public official”: an analyst/manager at a federal research organization. By law, I was prohibited from benefitting from insider knowledge gained through my job. By law, I was prohibited from owning any individual stock, or any sector based mutual fund, that related to the industries covered by the group I worked for, and later led. We had to fill out annual reports on any gifts recieved from outside our immediate family. We were limited to accepting gifts from any company or group that were in excess of $20 in value, cumulative, for the year. So, if touring an integrated steel mill for a day (and it does take all day) and the company took us to their executive dining room for lunch, we had to report it if we thought it was worth over $20. If I applied for a job with any company, law firm, or organization that had business before our agency, I had to report it to the ethics office and recuse myself from any ongoing work involving that entity. So, there are already plenty of laws and regulations covering federal employees like you call for in your post. The problem is that Congress exempted themselves from all the restrictions they placed on all other federal employees. The Supreme Court seems to have exempted themselves as well. There’s the truth you’re looking for.
Thank You for your service! I should have said Congress/Supreme Court.
Government policy to cut emissions? Actually tax corporations you fucking cowards. Use the millions of dollars from those taxes to install chargers and incentivize automakers to make quality, affordable vehicles. We need a functioning government, not the collection of fuck sticks running things now.
They shift the burden to the consumers on everything. Ban plastic bags but not mandate that all drinks come in the same type of plastic bottle with no coloring so it can be recycled type of things.
We’ve skipped the evolutionary step of the PHEV. These should also be considered for incentives. In the plains, where I live, we travel hours to get from one larger town to another. My oldest kid lives about 300 miles away. We visit fairly often in both summer and winter. It takes around 4 hours or so. We would love an EV, but the range isn’t there, especially in the winter. A PHEV would suit us wonderfully. We could EV around town, and drive distance on gas. I think you would get more people into that transition period than an abrupt change from ICE to EV. Once infrastructure has caught up, the PHEV people would be ready to do the full switch.
PHEV did get incentives. A 300-mile road trip in an EV at that distance would add 1 20-minute charging stop to get there during the warmer months and maybe 2 depending on how cold it gets and the battery chemistry. Probably 37 minutes of charging time added to the trip if you have to stop twice depending on the BEV. I do 300-mile trips all the time in a Tesla Model 3 Long Range. The 300 each way mark is where an EV does well. I have driven from California to Twin Falls, ID without issue. Stops were short enough that when I went in to hit the restroom the car was ready to go when I got there.
Weather can play a big role as can terrain. I also live with good infrastructure and weather conditions that work well for an EV. Gas is also very expensive here so the difference in cost is very big. I didn’t go EV just for the gas savings. It was a mix or reasons, and I can’t imagine going back to an ICE vehicle for daily driving and road tripping unless it’s some fun classic car.
The next generation of BEV will likely be a good fit but if you don’t need a new vehicle then keeping what you have is the best option.
I wouldn’t mind the charge time, but the charging infrastructure isn’t here yet. This is a very rural state. Temperatures routinely get far below 0 in the winter. The tesla owners I know have told me their battery performance drops significantly in the winter. The combo of heater and just cold on batteries do that. I truly want to go EV, but our current lifestyle doesn’t work with what is available, especially in a decent price range.
Considering China’s growing dominance in the EV market (cars and batteries,) I have to roll my eyes when I hear conservatives saying, “Why should we put ourselves at a economic disadvantage by pursing Green tech when China isn’t doing anything.”
China is still dirtier than it should be (coal and oil,) but when it come to advancing tech, they’re leaving the rest of the world in the dust.
look what they do with it though. You go get your social credit score, I’ll stay behind a few years.
It took over 25 yrs to transition from and ban incandescent light bulbs, why anyone believes ICE to EV is going to be any easier. Think about the light bulb path over that time; first CFLs were crap, then they got better, market became full of cheap alternatives plus quality regressed, LEDs became the next big thing, quicker to crap + cheap alternatives, overall became pretty good eventually, but now every light fixture has built in non-replaceable LEDs which makes the whole thing disposable.
Perhaps our future is Carvana like EV vending machines, need a car you go to the vending machine to get an EV and upon return it goes straight to recycle, they are single use.
Spot on
Depressingly accurate.
Mandates Schmandates:
We Autopians are entertaining educated informed energetic and vocal in our world beliefs and especially with regard to all things automotive.
Alas, 98.6% of Americans are not and 49.9% of them will never accept any US government policy (ie mandate) that relates to climate change. They will absolute destroy any politician that thinks otherwise.
Some will never believe human’s could CAUSE global warming. The rest (as David Letterman would say) are happy if they just have cold beer, Cheetos and cable TV to watch, the world be damned.
On top of that (depending on the election cycle) only around half the people eligible to vote even do, so things never change. Policies are written by politicians, and, as the quote goes: “politicians are a lot like diapers, they should be changed frequently, and for the same reasons”.
In Brooklyn you reserve a spot by sticking a lawn chair in it. Or a traffic cone and a 25 year old with a walkie-talkie.
The most “realistic” solution would be to create a virus—no, not that one, a much more effective one—that incubates over a longer time frame so that it spreads more thoroughly before discovery leads to any kind of preventative measures and that causes fatality rates well into the double digits while sterilizing the majority of the survivors. That’s what might work. Otherwise, we need to recognize that we’re dealing with humans here, and they don’t change even as the climate does. As long as the Xenarthrans survive, I really don’t care what happens to humans.
The pamatheres and glyptodonts are already gone.
Too complicated, all we need is about a 6 mile wide meteor.
“The most “realistic” solution would be to create a virus—no, not that one, a much more effective one—that incubates over a longer time frame so that it spreads more thoroughly before discovery leads to any kind of preventative measures and that causes fatality rates well into the double digits while sterilizing the majority of the survivors”
I also had such high hopes for Covid…
Oh well, maybe next time.
#1: Get rid of the “light truck” CAFE loophole.
#2: Expand incentives towards not only EVs, but also PHEVs and small economy cars. Getting people into smaller, lighter, more efficient cars make sense, regardless of what they’re being powered by. If that’s what it takes to get subcompacts back on our roads, so be it. Let people commuting around in F-350s pay for it.
#3: Not sure how it’s done, but much of our transportation problem comes from the housing crisis, which forces people into exurbs and long commutes. Certain zoning requirements that make it impossible to build multi family and small single family homes need to be made illegal. Then we can finally design our cities and towns around rational public transit.
#3 is especially poignant. People living in the suburbs and exurbs need to be allowed to run open-to-public businesses out of their homes or in second homes, and/or build a customer-accessible business on their own property. THIS would allow communities to become walkable again without new infrastructure. The zoning laws as they exist today are completely at odds with the needs of the people that live under them. Building more shit is going to take more resources to construct AND maintain, and is just an added liability. We need to avoid more liabilities, as there are already too many as it is. The way suburbs are built in the USA today are completely and totally unsustainable, and the amount of resources required to maintain their infrastructure exceeds that produced by those living in them.
Thus far, the solution has been to keep expanding. The current form of economy we are living under is a pyramid scheme that will fail because it requires endless growth on a planet of finite space and resources.
I highly recommend ‘Not Just Bikes’ on YouTube for this topic. The most desirable neighborhoods in this country would be illegal to build new in just about any municipality at this point. It makes little sense. Zoning has an awful lot to do with that, and our addiction to suburban tracts designed around cars is completely unsustainable.
I’m lucky to live in a neighborhood built in the late 1800s/early 1900s, before cars were prevalent. The quality of life is great; walkable to conveniences, a downtown area, schools, etc. But a neighborhood on small lots, multi-family buildings, mixed use spaces hardly get built anymore. Outside of our small city, you either get apartment/townhome complexes connected to literally nothing (this seems to be the worst form of existence, why would you want to live on top of others AND not be walkable to anything?), or McMansion style subdivisions. There is little else. Now people fight to the death for any reasonable housing that does exist, because it’s in such short supply.
It makes plenty of sense when you realize that the entities that create these rules and force us to abide by them, more often than not without our input or consent, also make the most money off of these rules existing. The expensive/inefficient/wasteful/ecocidal/top-heavy way things are today, was not accidental, but instead the result of deliberate planning and decision making.
As the game of musical chairs ends, all of those left without a chair when the music stops are expected to just meekly go without, and there is an entire armed government ready and willing to put them in their place should the losers of this game, a game that they were forced to play and where most of the chairs were already claimed before the music even started, happen to correctly recognize that this is an unfair arrangement and decide to do something about it.
Seconded.
All the EV stuff in the US is just lip service and unfortunately we are a country that the majority of people don’t care, are not held responsible, and any govt program is not designed right.
The EU will be many times more successful in the EV future. While the EU is not perfect; look how much better they are with public transport, public safety for pedestrians/cyclists, garbage & recycling. Garbage and waste is a great example, in how many countries is styrofoam banned where in the US we don’t even recycle it anymore. Recycling of paper, plastic, metal, etc is done well in the EU where its a joke in the US. In many EU countries there’s mandatory separation of organic material. Pollution related to garbage in the EU vs US, something I should google.
Here’s a great US EV program, have all the homeless walk around with backpack portable EV chargers and all you gotta do is find one to charge, pay them upon return, kills 2 birds with one stone.
I like the Homeless recharging Jobs program. Might suggest a cart rather than a backpack—you know, due to weight and all.
If you keep the tweakers juiced up they might be able to manage it.
The government has direct control over a number of substantial negative climate impacting behaviours within it’s own operations. For instance:
No parole for the turkeys until they have completed their court mandated community service.
in my belly! Yes I quoted Fat Bastard.
I’d love to see more biking and walking paths. Better public transportation would help as well. When I’m in NYC it’s easy to get around but on Long Island if you don’t own a car you’re basically fucked.
I’d also push manufacturers to make PHEVs standard equipment before going full electric. You can make 13 RAV4 Primes with one Hummer EV battery. It’s battery is 246.8 kWh. A RAV4 Primes battery is 18.1 kWh and would cover most daily commutes.
Actually battery powered vehicles are simply gimmicks n a fad! Overpriced n overrated n no one wants these because they are not practical and the electrical infrastructure is in shambles n it only gets worse by trying to force people into an impossible situation!
“I’d love to see more biking and walking paths”
My city of San Jose is doing that. So far it hasn’t impacted my getting around by car but it has greatly improved my getting around by bike.