The eTron Con

Some inside baseball that’s relevant to the bum’s rush (Uncle’s rush, really) toward an Electric Car Future:

They don’t send me electric cars to test drive. Not one. Not yet. Probably not ever.

They send me everything else – except for GM, which stopped sending me cars to punish me for expressing un-PC opinions about the company’s leg-humping of “diversity” (see here for more about that). But the point is, GM  did send me cars and could send me cars.

Just not electric cars.

Why is this relevant to the EV discussion?

Amazon.com Gift Card i... Buy New $25.00 (as of 06:10 UTC - Details) Because it demonstrates badly how gimped EVs are – and I figured someone (it won’t be the “consumer” press) ought to tell you about it, in case you’ve taken too many pulls on the electric car crack pipe and actually bought into the EV hype, which is potentially much more dangerous to your wallet than a time share or a Pampered Chef distributorship.

Okay, gather ’round.

My place in SW Virginia is about 200 miles from the central press car hub for the northeast region, which is located in the Northern Virginia/Maryland suburbs. Press cars are brand-new cars put into a special fleet for distribution to car journalists like me. A driver who works for the fleet management company drives a new car to a journalist’s house or place of business, drops it off for him to test out for a week and then comes back the following week to pick it up.

It’s no problem for the delivery drivers who work for the press fleets to make the trip from there to here in 3-4 hours, traffic depending. Usually doable on a full tank but if it’s a muscle car or some such, no problem. Just refuel and back on the road.

No worries.

Unless it’s an EV.

Now the driver’s got a worry. Amazon.com Gift Card i... Buy New $25.00 (as of 02:30 UTC - Details)

Because an electric car can’t make it from there to here without stopping at least once – for a minimum of 30-45 minutes each time and that’s the best-case scenario, assuming the driver can find a “fast” (high voltage) charger. These are still hard to find – and if one can’t be found, then it’s an overnight stay for the driver and what was a 3-4 drive becomes a two-day ordeal.

Two days’ pay for the driver, plus the cost of a hotel for the overnight stay. The EV will not have burned any gas during the odyssey but a lot money and time will have been burned through.

The other option is a flatbed truck – which could get the EV here in a few hours – but that gets into money (and time) too. And as hard as it may be for government parasites to grok, people who can’t legally just steal money to support their activities have to think about what things cost and operate within certain economic parameters.

So, no EVs for me – or any other car journalist outside the orbit of an EV’s range on a single charge. Which means only urban/suburban journalists within about 50 miles of the press car hub get EVs to test drive.

This accounts for the vacuous, dishonest coverage of EVs. All you need to do is flip it around to see what I mean.

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