EVs and Idiocracy

 It's been pretty cold here in Northeast Ohio for the past few days. It's single digit temperatures overnight and 10-15F during the day lately. In the central part of the country, like in Illinois and Iowa it's been sub-zero degrees F for a couple of days. In Canada it's been brutally cold.

A number of videos of Tesla owners struggling with the cold have been circulating YouTube. If the battery is depleted on an EV in very cold weather, it's a nightmare scenario to charge the thing. If the battery is not warm enough, it will not accept a charge. If it's marginal, the normal 45 minute recharge time can extend to hours. Since a bunch of owners end up in the same situation at the same time, the Tesla supercharging locations are packed with bricked vehicles and tow times go up to 9 hours.

One of the common reactions in the videos is the owners blame themselves for not correctly planning or jumping through the correct sequence of hoops to keep their $50,000+ car operational in the cold weather. If you have an ICE car how much time do you devote to keeping your car in working condition in the winter? Do you even have to think about your car at all? I don't. My car is 16 years old and will probably make it one more year before it succumbs to rust. If I could magically fix all the rust issues, I might get 2 more years of life out of it before the trans or engine goes out.  I jumped in the car at 0F and went to the YMCA a couple of days ago and didn't ever wonder about the range, or if the thing would start, or how much heat I could use, etc...

Anyway, I think EVs are part of an overall trend toward more complexity and associated declining reliability, and quality of life. There's really just not enough smart people to make all our electronic garbage work really well. I've noticed this phenomenon in my work as a software dude all through my career. Everything from operating systems, to compilers, to build systems has gotten more complicated, bigger, and has more capabilities than ever, but it's all pretty shitty.

Everyone lives just to feed the system and it keeps getting hungrier. I wonder how long this is all going to last.