While EVs are all the rage with automakers right now (if not with their customers), their green bona fides have increasingly come into question over the past few years. SF Gate has a reminder that, when it comes to Tesla, pulling back the curtain even a little reveals all sorts of dirty secrets.

The Harris Ranch Supercharger sits at on a beautiful resort-style ranch between San Francisco and Los Angeles and provides good food and plenty of charging spots for folks making the six-hour journey between the two cities. Tesla hails the Harris Ranch site as the largest bank of EV chargers in the world at 98 spots, but one journalist found that the Superchargers are often supplemented by a small diesel plant. From SF Gate:

The Central California charging station is such a big deal that Tesla clubs even make it an appointment destination. Yes, they’ll rally-style drive to it just to honor its lineage and size.
 
But as with many Tesla-related things, there is a secret, thinly obscured by an Oz-like curtain, at the Harris Ranch Supercharger. Hidden in plain sight across the way from the Harris Ranch Supercharger’s main stations, behind a Shell station, is a small diesel plant that has helped power Tesla’s footprint.

The news was first broken by investigative journalist Edward Niedermeyer. In May 2015, Niedermeyer drove from his Oregon home to Harris Ranch to see whether “Musk’s latest bit of dream weaving could stand up to reality.”

What Niedermeyer reportedly found was a little different from the company’s clean energy claims.
 
“I discovered that Tesla’s battery swap station was not in fact being made available to owners who regularly drove between California’s two largest cities,” Niedermeyer wrote in a May 2022 exposé for Slate. “Instead, the company was running diesel generators to power additional Superchargers (the kind that take 30 to 60 minutes to recharge a battery) to handle the holiday rush, their exhaust mingling with the unmistakable smell of bulls—t.”
 

The fact that a small diesel plant was helping power the additional chargers kicked off a series of events that unraveled the myth of Elon Musk for Niedermeyer: “Once you stop taking Musk at his word,” he wrote, “his heroic popular image evaporates, and a far darker reality begins to reveal itself.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/wisconsin-supreme-court-bans-absentee-ballot-drop-boxes/

^^^^^Holy crap! I knew they were heavier but not that much heavier.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has banned absentee ballot drop boxes in the state.

Wisconsin Public Radio reports, “The majority decision was written by Justice Rebecca Bradley and joined by the rest of the court’s conservative majority, including swing Justice Brian Hagedorn.”

“Nothing in the statutory language detailing the procedures by which absentee ballots may be cast mentions drop boxes or anything like them,” Bradley wrote in the ruling.

“WEC’s staff may have been trying to make voting as easy as possible during the pandemic, but whatever their motivations, WEC must follow Wisconsin statutes,” Bradley continued. “Good intentions never override the law.”

Additionally, voters must personally deliver absentee ballots to the clerk’s office. Others, including roommates and spouses, will not be allowed to deliver ballots for them.

Electric vehicle (EV) sales are up, but that may come with unintended—if not lethal—consequences. EVs pose many problems that are not well-known including potentially dangerous conditions in commercial parking garages and the fire risks associated with lithium-ion batteries used by EV's.

Electric vehicles are becoming more prevalent, and being scrutinized for their potential dangers, even when they are not being driven. In July of this year a cargo ship caught fire off the Netherlands' coast after 3,500 new vehicles caught fire while in transport. One crew member was killed, and investigators said "the fire started in the battery of an electric car."

Flammability aside, EVs elicit concerns because of just how heavy they are compared to traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Many older parking garages were simply not built with the weights of modern cars in mind, let alone EVs. The lithium-ion batteries that power new EVs account for a large portion of the weight discrepancy with traditional cars. For example, according to automotive trade journal Jobber News, "An electric vehicle can weigh much more than its internal combustion engine counterpart — the Ford F-150 Lightning can weigh 2,000-3,000 pounds more than the ICE version."

The battery of an electric GMC Hummer weighs approximately 2,900 pounds, or about the same as an entire 2022 Honda Civic.