Even NPR is beginning to realize electric vehicles won’t work for most people.

When Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set out on a four-day electric-vehicle road trip this summer, she knew charging might be a challenge. But she probably didn’t expect anyone to call the cops.

Granholm’s trip through the southeast, from Charlotte, N.C., to Memphis, Tenn., was intended to draw attention to the billions of dollars the White House is pouring into green energy and clean cars. The administration’s ambitious energy agenda, if successful, could significantly cut U.S. emissions and reshape Americans’ lives in fundamental ways, including by putting many more people in electric vehicles.

On town hall stops along her road trip, Granholm made a passionate, optimistic case for this transition. She often put up a photo of New York City in 1900, full of horses and carriages, with a single car. Then another slide: “Thirteen years later, same street. All these cars. Can you spot the horse?”

It was in between stops that Granholm’s entourage had to grapple with contemporary problems, like a lack of charging stations, long wait times, including some charging stations that were inoperable. In one instance, NPR points out, one of Granholm’s staff tried parking a gas-powered vehicle near a working charger in Georgia to reserve a spot for the Energy Secretary.

A family involved had a baby on board and it was in the heat of a Georgia summer got boxed out by Granholm’s staffer, and decided to call police. Unfortunately, the police couldn’t do anything but, overall, this was terrible etiquette. To her credit, the NPR reporter, Camila Domonoske and who owns an electric vehicle, wrote about everything that happened (good and bad) and also acknowledged the problems too:

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.

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.

Ultimately, the Biden Administration is wasting money on electric vehicles that no one wants to buy whole trying to outlaw gas-powered vehicles. To their credit, Tesla has a lot of what was needed for the trip in place, like charging station infrastructure for their vehicles. However, the overall prices of electric cars are still way too high compared to gas-powered vehicles and there’s the reliability factor as well.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay