Posted on 07/31/2023 9:39:57 AM PDT by DFG
An “unidentified electric vehicle” — actually a Tesla Model Y — accused of siphoning power from the local electric utility energized the gossip mill in the small eastern Montana town of Ekalaka last week, prompting front page newspaper coverage, a frantic apology and, in the end, much jawboning about the future of transportation in one of the most remote counties in the lower 48 states.
Driver Chad Lauterbach said in an interview after the fact that he and his girlfriend, Allis Markham, had driven up from Los Angeles to volunteer at the county museum’s annual dinosaur festival. Markham, a nationally prominent taxidermist, has helped out at the museum in the past, but drives a 1989 Toyota Land Cruiser that only gets 10 miles per gallon of gas, so they decided to make the trip in Lauterbach’s electric car instead.
As it turns out, though, Ekalaka’s sparsely populated corner of southeast Montana — the town, two hours in any direction from the nearest Walmart, is home to all of 400 residents — is still an uncharted frontier as far as electric vehicle charging networks are concerned. Lauterbach and Markham said the Tesla’s built-in navigation system spent the entire stretch of the drive up from Gillette, Wyoming, telling them they were headed into a charging desert.
“It kept throwing warnings and red banners and stuff,” Lauterbach said. “It was trying to protect me from doing something stupid.”
If push came to shove, Lauterbach said, he figured he’d be able to plug the car into a standard 120-volt outlet in someone’s garage, even though charging that way would have taken days.
(Excerpt) Read more at montanafreepress.org ...
I bet I can remove them with one of the bits in the standard 30+ tamper proof bit set I have. Less than $15 at Amazon.
‘Bird nerd’ left her social media job to become a rogue taxidermist
Nov. 28, 2019, The Seattle Times
People need to read the whole article before criticizing him. He checked before plugging in and followed up.
The most interesting part to me was it cost him $300 in electric cost to travel 3,000 miles excluding the amount he paid in this town or $3.00 to travel 30 miles. That is not much savings.
Saw a Tesla the other day driving through town with the license plate “IM DUMM” LOL!
” Markham, a nationally prominent taxidermist, “ Just how does one become “a nationally prominent taxidermist?”
“The co-op staff initially told her not to worry about the bill, Markham said, but after some back and forth the couple ended up paying $60 for access to the electricity. That sum also covered the electricity used by the musician who plugged into the outlet for the dinosaur festival’s Saturday-night street dance.”
If you’d taken the link and read the article you would have read that he went to the utility and paid $60. The staff even laughed and told him he didn’t need to.
He wasn’t a crook, just a poor, misguided fool who bought an EV.
“ The most interesting part to me was it cost him $300 in electric cost to travel 3,000 miles excluding the amount he paid in this town or $3.00 to travel 30 miles. That is not much savings.”
Me too.
The EV fanboys (and girls) are always claiming it costs them pennies to charge up. Apparently they are lying. I pay about the same per mile (actually a bit less) for the wife’s car and I don’t have any stress about where the next fueling station is located.
One of my drilling supervisors lived in Ekalaka about 40 years ago. It was a much much smaller town then. He had a Super Cub to go to the grocery store.
Try making that trip in the dead of winter...they would likely find them dead in their Tesla come spring.
You’re not supposed to read the links on FR
During last year’s heat wave I was driving out of town to escape for a few days. On the drive a semi had overturned and blocked the highway for about two hours. I was idling comfortable with the AC keeping it nice and cool. After traffic started moving the side of the road was littered with EVs that had run out of juice keeping their ACs running. Such stupid vehicles. Even if I had run out of diesel I bet I could have given someone 20 bucks to let me siphon a gallon of fuel. How yah gonna siphon a a few kilowatts for a stupid electric car?
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