It’s Not Easy Being Green

EVs are fraught with problems (but feeling inferior because you drive one isn't one of them).

The other day, my neighbor Grace texted me in a panic. Hey, are you home? she wrote. I have a problem. The part of the story where Grace moved with her kids to Texas from Canada but was forced to leave her husband behind—for nine months now and counting—because he cannot get into the United States even though she’s a US citizen and they’ve been married for twenty-plus years and have three children together isn’t the point here. (We joke that she should fly him to Mexico and then he can just stroll right in. Is there a word for funny and true and also infuriatingly, ridiculously wrong?) Grace’s problem in the moment wasn’t our country’s insane immigration “policies;” it was her Tesla.

She’d just gotten to her daughter’s school talent show when she got the notice that her battery was about to take its last few gasping breaths (even though it had lied when they left the house and said it had plenty of juice). If she let the thing die right there in the school parking lot, there’s no “jumping” a Tesla; she’d have to get it towed. And she couldn’t do that because she had to catch a flight in just a few hours, a mad dash she’d scheduled on purpose so that she wouldn’t miss her daughter’s performance. Left with no other choice, Grace hopped in her fancy, high-tech EV and raced home on lithium fumes* to get it plugged in.

[*I do not know if lithium gives off fumes. In retrospect, it probably does not. That was me employing a little literary device called hyperbole. Hopefully this confession will stem a tide of comments looking to school me in the science of EV production and propulsion.)

Grace made it home before the battery died, but now she was stuck at her house, her daughter was stuck at school, and she’d missed the part of the performance that was her reason for scheduling the miserable redeye in the first place. I ran the keys to my reliable, not-fancy, low-tech, not-a-Tesla across the street and told her to have it back by whenever o’clock.

On the All Time Disaster scale, electric vehicles are up there with the Titanic, Chernobyl and Joe Biden. And I’m not even talking about the fact that the mining of lithium-ion batteries contaminates soil, degrades air quality, and consumes and pollutes unholy quantities of water. I also won’t mention the bit where the US Department of Labor has put lithium batteries on the list of goods made with materials known to be produced with child labor. And why would I even bring up the fact that the machinery used to mine lithium runs on those dirty fossil fuels that are almost as bad as cow farts in terms of their impact on climate change? Even if EVs weren’t a greenwashed, virtue-signaling, unmitigated environmental disaster, can we talk about how problematic in literally every way they are?

It’s LA. Of course the guy’s going to be a little dramatic.

I mean, I dig a falcon wing door as much as the next gal, but I’m not about to go Laila Ali on some smug, tree-hugging dude driving a Chevy Bolt to get to the charger first. (Who am I kidding? I would probably do exactly that. Which is reason 7,392 I won’t ever buy an EV.)

And can we talk about fickle? Teslas are basically the Goldilocks of the auto world. I get it; I didn’t crown myself POPME [Princess of Pretty Much Everything] for nothing. I’m particular. Finicky, some might say. I don’t like to be cold, I don’t like to be hot. I don’t like to be late, and I really don’t like it when you’re late. I don’t like to be sandy, sweaty, seasick, smelly, or made to wait an unnecessarily long time for anything. But also I am not a vehicle, which last time I checked had one job: to get you where you need to go when you need to go there.

From this Newsweek article: “Tesla advises motorists that they should drive to a charging location 30-45 minutes away or precondition the battery before driving in order to adequately warm the battery so it can sustain charging.” Convenient!

CNN blames the “massive disappointment” that is the EV industry on the “troubling gap between expectations and reality.”

The expectation: Your vegan-friendly Nissan LEAF will fire up regardless of the season.

The reality: Sorry, sugar. It’s a bit too brisk out there for my liking. Hit me up in May maybe?

The expectation: Thanks to Biden’s $7.5 billion infrastructure package’s promise of building 5000,000 electric charging stations, you’ll never be far from a power source.

The reality: “Hahahahaha we lie about literally everything! You should know that by now. It’s not our fault you’re gullible.”

Blatant, opportunistic lies *could* undermine that reelection messaging. No one can say for sure.

Just kidding! That was back in December. Don’t worry, old Joe has been working really hard on turning this around since then.

If you think finding a place to charge your EV and then possibly having to fistfight your way to the plug-in port are going to be your only worries as a member of Team Tesla, think again. According to Consumer Reports, EVs have nearly 80% more problems—ranging from brake malfunctions to complete drive system failure—than conventional internal combustion engines. But those doors! And that giant-screen infotainment system! (Seems safe, BTW.) You can’t really put a price on coolness, can you?

The nonstop negative press certainly isn’t helping out the frustrated folks who’d very much like to unload their clunkers on some other sanctimonious unsuspecting soul and get back into a trusty fuel burner.

In the last year, preowned EV prices fell by up to 32%. Ouch.

The funny thing is, the exact same people who fell for the “but your shot protects me” poppycock are the ones buying the “electric vehicles are the answer to climate change” malarkey. (Does Facebook have a “Got my EV!” banner yet?) Maybe they missed the study that came out in 2022 that found EVs are actually more toxic to the environment than gas-powered cars, releasing 1,850 times (not a typo) more particle pollution than modern tailpipes. You can’t blame them. It’s not like it was on the lamestream news. (Sort of like the side-effects and sudden deaths associated with the jabs.) And of course, they’re being offered tax credits, incentives, and even grants to jump on board the electric train. (Sort of like they were “offered” threats, incentives, and even bribes to get them to roll up their sleeves.) You’d have to be a bloody freaking genius an especially critical thinker not to get bamboozled by all the BS. You might even have to—gasp!—do your own research.

If you got yourself a Tesla because you dig its fly body style or you just can’t live without that auto pilot feature, more power to you. (Literally 🤣) But unless you’re idling next to me on your Schwinn and the Model Y is parked in your garage at home, don’t even think about giving me the smug side-eye. My SUV may be a gas guzzler, but at least I’m not pretending to be green.