The tires weren’t dragging. See the engine spinning instead of the tires disappearing under friction. 

Read the article, it is all explained

I like Tesla’s cars and crossovers, and am in support of their tech and their company, but come on. The Cybertruck looks stupid and is not the best design for...trucking. Don’t be swayed by your adoration for a company. Tesla is also the biggest EV automaker so any article about *another* EV automaker would be remiss…

Why do all EV naysayers neglect to point out the fact that some solar panels + battery storage can charge your car off-grid? With the potential to also power your home off-grid.

Actually, Texas had more problems with water pipes than power. Sure the power went out for a bit, but did get back on after a few days. Water on the other hand, fixing all those burst pipes is still ongoing.  Also, if you’re in Texas, solar and geothermal is a no-brainer at this point. 

Compared to the rest of the country, Texas’s electrical grid was deregulated well before 1997. Right from the start, as the US created it’s electrical grid system, Texas set theirs up separately to avoid federal regulation. This isn’t the first or even the second time that a winter storm has caused issues with their el…

Worse - they get gas from local wells and well gas contains an amount of oil and water, which need to be separated before the remaining natural gas goes out. The separators did not have a heat source capable of keeping the water from freezing. Once the water in the separator freezes they have to shut down the well head…

Wish your comment could be moved to the top. The Cap Metro buses were also out spreading their electricity to neighborhoods that were out:

it’s still a bad take. if the weather is bad enough to take out public transit, there wasn’t demand for it during the bad weather anyway. also, during that week here in TX, the gas stations were either closed because they didn’t have electricity needed to run the pumps or they were sold out of gas anyway. EV fleets…

this article is bullshit. When the weather in Austin is bad enough to take out busses, nobody is leaving their homes anyway. Also, for those few days this year, gas stations either didn’t have the electricity to pump gas or they were sold out. everyone was shit out of luck, as we say in Texas.

You know what else doesnt work without electricity? Gas pumps.

Elizabeth I generally enjoy your blogs and for the most part they always seem well thought out but this one?

Nobody seems to be even mentioning the fact that the refineries, which were affected by this, were unable to produce any gasoline in the first place.

A huge FUD article. All those places affected by the power outage - the gas pumps didn’t work either. That didn’t bode well for gasoline infrastructure I’m sure. When the power goes out, the batteries in our two EV’s don’t suddenly go flat, rendering our cars unusable.

Couldn’t generators be used (or backup batteries) at critical recharge points (in your example, bus garages)?

Petroleum fuel stations were unable to supply fuel to gasoline powered vehicles during the power failure too. Doesn’t bode well for the oil infrastructure, does it?

Unfortunately this article misses the mark. I would recommend looking at the plans of states further along than Texas for electric vehicles. Those states are focuses on building out the grid alongside electric vehicles, and eventually, using EVs as giant rolling batteries to support the grid when they are needed.

When the power goes out and gas pumps aren’t on, how much range does a gas car have? Anywhere from 1-600 miles, pretty much randomly based on when you last filled up. I refuel my electric car everyday, so unless I’d only been home from a road trip a few minutes when the power went out, I’ll always have 250+ miles.

This is a really bad take. Texas’ electrical grid issues was due to Texas deregulating their electrical grid so that the grid was not properly weatherized. This is a nonissue in every other state, and if Texas’ fixes their grid it would be a nonissue there. The overall gradual increase in electricity use is a…

This Is not a good take. We need to make the electric grid resilient to people don’t literally die first, but also so cars can charge. This massive winter storm was exacerbated by power regulators failure to winterize natural gas power plants and the GOP deregulation of the TX utility market unable to load balance.…