Biden’s Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, encountered difficulties during her recent electric vehicle tour, which led to a confrontation with a family who called the police over a charging station dispute.
Even though the trip was “painstakingly mapped out ahead of time to allow for charging.” Granholm’s team found themselves in a dispute with an angry family when they attempted to reserve an electric vehicle charging spot by parking a gasoline car there.
NPR reported this in an article titled “Electric cars have a road trip problem, even for the secretary of energy.”
Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm claims "there is no blocking of [oil and gas] production in the United States!" pic.twitter.com/jEo2A1oETc
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 14, 2023
The purpose of Granholm’s four-day journey from North Carolina to Tennessee was “intended to draw attention to the billions of dollars the White House is pouring into green energy and clean cars.”
“But between stops, Granholm’s entourage at times had to grapple with the limitations of the present,” said NPR’s Camila Domonoske, who was with her. When Granholm’s staff figured out no charging ststions were close to Augusta, Ga., “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.”
“That did not go down well: a regular gas-powered car blocking the only free spot for a charger?” Domonoske said.
“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,” she said. “They called the police.”
“I drive an electric vehicle myself, and I’ve test-driven many more as NPR’s auto reporter. I know how easy it can be to charge when everything goes well and how annoying it can be when things go poorly,” she said. “Riding along with Granholm, I came away with a major takeaway: EVs that aren’t Teslas have a road trip problem, and the White House knows it’s urgent to solve this issue.”
“On the secretary’s road trip, that stop in Grovetown included a charger with a dead black screen,” NPR wrote. “At another stop in Tennessee, the Chevy Bolt that I was riding in charged at one-third the rate it should have. Electrify America says that’s not an isolated problem; a faulty component has caused a number of chargers to be ‘derated’ while the company works on a fix.”
The distance an electric car can travel between charges varies depending on the make and model, but it typically ranges from 100 to 370 miles on a single charge.
“Ultimately, we want to make it super-easy for people to travel long distances,” Granholm said.
