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The Valley of Fire is no place to be when your EV is out of power

2023-08-01 00:00:00.0 华盛顿邮报-华盛顿特区原网页

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I just lost another evening to car pricing and searching, indecision and then panic. I need to replace my dead car, and I want to go electric, but I will never forget that day in fire valley.

It happened earlier this summer when we found ourselves splay-sitting on the sidewalk of a gas station convenience store in the Nevada desert, wilted and humiliated.

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“Check the app, please,” my younger son whined.

“I dunno. It says 0.6 kilowatts?” I said, squinting at my phone screen, with zero clue about how far that much power would get our sleek, electric rental car, which was tethered to the sole charger we could find in a 24-mile radius of our little sightseeing adventure into the Valley of Fire State Park.

This is what the fear of electric vehicles is all about — being stranded at the dumb intersection of impulse and unexpected circumstances in a situation our family has dubbed “fire valley.”

While the daily experience of the average American driver putzing between school and the grocery store would not leave them stranded, the anxiety of it is visceral in the existential response to the Biden administration’s goal of making half of new car sales electric by 2030. While we wring our hands, the market is gearing up — seven car manufacturers last week announced a massive campaign to grow fast-charging stations across the nation.

We’ll need it.

“Sure, we’d love to try an EV,” I thought, when we left the rental car agency in Nevada with a Chevy Bolt, which promised us it would go another 172 miles.

It did not.

I had tried this once before, chuffed when a Tesla was available for a weekly rental after my car caught fire this spring — thus the perpetual car shopping — and I needed a stopgap. It was a glorious vacation into a sleek and soundless, minimalist future, like driving around in an Apple Genius Bar.

My Monday erupted in actual flames as I expected national politics to do the same

Charging wasn’t too hard, even though we don’t have a charger at home, which is really the only way — I’ve decided — an EV car can work for our family. (We made it work with two banks of Tesla chargers in D.C., one near my son’s school.)

It was undeniably cool. But a Tesla isn’t in our price range, so I was excited to get the Chevy Bolt on our recent trip.

Now, with fire valley seared into their brains, my family can’t bolt away from it fast enough.

We were in Las Vegas, which — like many American cities — simply doesn’t have an EV infrastructure robust enough to make a casual rental an easy experience.

After we safely returned from fire valley, I spent another 90 minutes pinballing between the charging stations that popped up on my map. Two hookups were out of order, and there was a line of five cars waiting for the remaining four in the first station I found. We all watched a guy who clearly thought we were chumps move the traffic cones and plug his car into a dead charger.

His defeat was immediate, his retreat ungracious. The next chargers I tried were either broken or didn’t exist.

“Charging is an inseparable part of the EV experience,” Mercedes-Benz chief executive Ola K？llenius said last week as part of the announcement by a car manufacturers alliance that pledges to double the number of EV stations in America “to make it as convenient as possible.”

This is the only way to deliver on any of the EV aspirations set by the leaders who choose to acknowledge climate change and the high cost, in cash and geopolitics, of a gas-dependent nation. Other leaders — despite the worldwide shift toward EV (China is dominating global EV sales, followed closely by Europe) — are hobbling their constituents by turning this into yet another culture war.

Yes, the research on what the shift away from gas-powered cars will mean for the environment is clear — although reports on what it has taken to build EV batteries are troubling. As a practical matter, these legislative goals cast in our collective responsibility to curb climate change will only work with enough tax incentives, price breaks and investments in a robust charging infrastructure.

Without that, everything will become fire valley.

Earlier this year, Maryland was one of 17 states that agreed to follow California’s strict emissions standards and make 2035 the deadline to end all sales of new gas-powered cars.

The move will have “generational impacts,” Gov. Wes Moore (D) said, before he drove off in a mustard-colored electric Mustang after an announcement in Baltimore.

Wonder if he was racing to a charging station.

While the highest percentage of EV ownership is found in left-leaning counties, a recent poll showed blue Marylanders aren’t overwhelmingly in support of his plan. Which is surprising. Have they been to “fire valley” too?

Marylanders oppose phasing-out gas-powered vehicles, poll shows

That poll showed folks like saving the environment, but they’re squeamish about paying more for EV cars.

Even more surprising is the data showing pockets of Trump country — places in Florida, central California and Texas, even — are beginning to ditch gas guzzlers.

“I think selfishly it was, you know, how is this going to help my pocketbook?” a Republican-voting Marine veteran who heads a club of Tesla owners in Texas told The Washington Post’s Jeanne Whalen.

On both sides, it’s all about the Benjamins, baby.

Despite another sizzling summer of record-setting temperatures and freak storms, it’s still hard for us to live with future generations — rather than the heft of our bank accounts — in mind.

That’s why I have to get serious about making this decision. I still don’t know what I will do, even though I know exactly what I should do.

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