The ICE War (not the Cold War)

I’ve been concerned about the future of safe, in-the-wild EV charging for a while now. Back in 2012, President Obama made the horrendous mistake of being photographed sitting in a Chevy Volt. He even mentioned he might buy one, after the end of his presidency.

Why was it a mistake? The far right’s hatred of him, coupled with the EV tax credit and the GM bail-out made conservative pundits (like Rush Limbaugh) start making EVs political, turning conservatives against them. I wrote about this, back in my very early years of electric driving. When I worked for Green Mountain Energy, selling renewable electricity, many people would walk away, saying it was “that Obama B.S.” When I started selling plug-in vehicles, I noticed that many conservative clients would immediately dismiss the Volt or Bolt EV as “liberal.”

How does a vehicle become liberal? Aren’t conservatives concerned about national security? Energy security? International competition? American manufacturing jobs? War preparedness? (You can’t win wars if you decimate your manufacturing base.)

Coal rollers started targeting Tesla and Prius drivers, dumping large amounts of black, sooty exhaust on them. My wife was the victim of one of these coal rolling events and told me, even at freeway speeds, it was difficult to see the road ahead and very frightening. At the time, I thought it juvenile and ridiculous and blogged about the phenomenon by writing new lyrics to the “Rawhide” theme song and about the toxic masculinity it illustrates.

Now, out culture wars are taking another turn for the worse and it’s time we EV drivers started to push our elected representatives to act, before someone gets killed.

Much has been written, over the years, about “ICEing” incidents and charger vandalism:

• 2018 (Hickory, North Carolina)
• 2021 (Firebaugh, California)
• 2022 (Reno, Nevada)
• 2022 (Cincinnati, Ohio)
• 2022 (Austin, Texas)

Notice that a person was injured in the last incident linked above. EV owners are starting to suggest vandalizing the culprit’s vehicles, in what can become a spiral into open violence.

Forty years of trickle-down economics have devastated the middle class. Perhaps the experience COVID-19 and the resulting “big resignation” will swing the pendulum back in favor of labor for a bit, but that won’t help right now. People, especially those in oil & gas, are getting scared for their jobs. Politicians are railing about loss of freedom, saying that taking action against climate change will include outlawing beef, outlawing vehicle ownership and other equally ridiculous claims, stirring up their base (and threats of violence).

It’s time those politicians went back to work for their constituents (us). I am sure they’d leap into action, if EV drivers started blocking gasoline or diesel pumps, but about half our politicians don’t want to be observed doing anything positive for electric vehicle adoption. Do we have to wait for the first ICE-ing incident that ends in a violent fatality? Would that even move politicians to do the right thing, instead of pandering to their base? It’s for certain that nothing will change until EV owners get VOCAL. We need municipal signage, similar to handicapped parking or no parking signs that spell out penalties and then we need the policing and enforcement of the ordinances cited. We want businesses to be able to install chargers and attract customers without having to police those chargers. We don’t leave it up to businesses to enforce handicapped parking restrictions, do we?

We can wait for politicians to do the right thing or we can raise our voices at rallies, write letters, sign petitions, join together in EV advocate groups (like TxETRA, in Texas, Electric Vehicle Association or Plug-in America) and vote like our lives depended on it.

You never know, one of these nights, along a dark desert highway, we’ll see a shimmering light of an EV charging station and feel safe stopping there.