Posted on 09/05/2023 6:03:23 AM PDT by Red Badger
An electric vehicle abruptly stopped in the middle of a busy road near Salisbury, England, and remained immovable for most of the day, causing a nine-hour traffic bottleneck.
The nightmarish gridlock began when a Tesla Model 3 Performance car ran out of power and broke down as it was making a turn off a high-traffic thoroughfare Tuesday afternoon, according to The Telegraph of London.
A team of workers was unable to move the stranded EV because “the handbrakes of electric cars, and some other modern cars, are controlled electronically, unlike those of traditional petrol and diesel cars which are mechanical,” the report said.
“This means that the handbrake often locks when the power fails and the car cannot be pushed or towed,” it said.
Matt Grigg, the landlord of a local pub, said the stranded Tesla obstructed traffic for most of the day before it was taken away to be recharged.
“A number of local workmen along with the policeman attempted to push the car to safety, however, despite their best efforts they could not move it,” Grigg told The Telegraph. “The obstruction caused delays throughout the rest of the day.”
He said officers had to stop at several different charging stations before finding one they could use to recharge the vehicle.
According to Grigg, the electric car stopped working mid-turn even though its battery gauge showed it still had several miles of charge left.
He said the road was not cleared of all recovery vehicles until 11:15 p.m., or roughly nine hours after the Tesla abruptly halted.
This type of sudden engine failure is not something consumers would expect of a Tesla Model 3 Performance, which cost £60,000, according to The Telegraph — or about $75,000.
This is yet another damning anecdote spotlighting the drawbacks of electric vehicles, which have been touted as the superior alternative to gas-powered cars.
In May, a Tesla broke down at a McDonald’s drive-thru in Ottawa, Ontario, and could not be moved.
A TikTok user captured the incident in a video that went viral: “So the Tesla died in the parking lot of the McDonald’s drive-thru. They can’t push it out because they can’t put it in gear.”
And it’s not just Tesla EVs that have experienced bizarre mechanical failures. In January, a GMC Hummer EV — which costs roughly $115,000 — broke down in the middle of a busy highway.
On the surface, the idea of an eco-friendly, sustainable electric vehicle sounds fantastic.
But so far, EVs have failed to live up to the hype — and they certainly have not earned widespread consumer confidence for reliability, safety or efficiency amid reports of:
Spontaneous battery fires.
Recharging nightmares.
Limited towing capacity.
Range malfunctions in cold weather.
Ironically, another major drawback of electric vehicles is how environmentally costly it is to produce them.
“Like any vehicle – they have to mine materials to make the car,” physicist Mark Mills told CBN News in November 2022. “You have to mine a lot more materials, metals, to make an electric vehicle than you do a conventional vehicle. By about 1,000 percent on average.”
He explained that miners must use heavy machines that burn diesel oil to dig up 500,000 pounds of earth to make a single, 1,000-pound EV battery.
While left-wing activists claim EVs are better for the environment because they supposedly generate zero carbon emissions, their environmental impact is massive.
President Joe Biden said during the 2020 campaign that he wanted to “transition” the U.S. away from oil in order to advance “green energy” programs.
It’s clear, however, that transitioning 332 million Americans from fossil fuels to less-reliable green energy will be inconvenient and expensive — and it isn’t even guaranteed to be better for the environment.
This does not mean EVs should be scrapped — but they certainly are not ready to replace gas-powered cars.
Why didn’t 4-5 big guys just flip the car over to the bar-ditch?
Excellent, an analog solution to a digital problem.
I like the plow approach albeit a bazooka would be pyrotechnic.
You would THINK that the idiot running the DOT would make it a requirement that a vehicle be rollable when electronically disabled. Too busy looking for equity, I suppose.
Or, in this case, the MOT…
Tell the muzzies it burned a koran
Flagged. Your post is too sensible for this day and age.
Technology is great until it stops working and makes complete fools of the people who are using it.
Another example of something humans have created but don’t know how to control.
Has anyone asked AAA how it plans to handle millions of EVs that won’t move? Charging their batteries takes a long time and makes each service call VERY expensive. EVs are heavy thanks to the batteries, and towing them becomes a totally different thing than what it is now.
The future that the dems have planned for us consists of being stuck in your EV on a highway - you can’t walk to anywhere civilized to get warm, use the bathroom, eat, or rest. You’ll be waiting in the EV for hours in the dark and cold. And possibly die. The dems don’t mind that - too many Americans anyway.
electric cars are not ready for prime time. Maybe in 10 years.
This whole EV thing is just a means to an end, to make personal transportation unaffordable, for all but the rich.
I live in hurricane country. No way in hell will I be dependent on one of those electric toys.
Not just any engineer is the solution
I didn’t know they had a tow truck shortage on the Salisbury Plain.
What do you do with a dead horse?
“the electric car stopped working mid-turn even though its battery gauge showed it still had several miles of charge left”
I know it is FR policy to comment without reading the article. However, apparently the vehicle stopped when it still showed it had enough battery power left.
Hey, at least it did not start on fire and need three or four pumper tank trucks of water to put out.
Nine hours? No tow trucks in the UK?
See #13
Towing companies will need to have an EV charger on the truck with a long extension cord.
Pyrotechnic yes but then the fire will burn for quite a while as we have discovered with EVs.
Na, just throw a little saltwater on it.
Sound like a job for Repo Man!
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