We’ve all read so-called “range anxiety” stories — and most EV owners know they amount to a hill of beans when it comes to the lived experience of electric cars. And yet, there seems to be a narrative in mainstream media that range anxiety is the key issue when it comes to EV adoption, one that they’re rather keen on pushing whenever the opportunity arises.
The New York Timespublished an article this week in which one of its climate reporters — one who claims to have had experience driving and charging Teslas in the past — describes an incident that ended with his depleted rental Volvo C40 Recharge being towed away by Hertz in rural Minnesota.
The blame, according to that Times reporter, lies at the feet of Hertz for not informing him of the few charging stations where he was headed (how would they know?), the C40 Recharge’s “slow” recharge speed (it supports 149kW DC), and the general state of US charging infrastructure (read: the one charger he found was too slow).
The reporter also briefly blames himself for choosing an EV for a trip into rural farming country without checking on the availability of charging stations, but this seems rather beside the overall story he’s attempting to drive home here: EVs and EV infrastructure aren’t “ready” for regular Americans. From the article:
But for now, if electric vehicles can’t get me from Minneapolis to the South Dakota border and back, they’re almost certainly not ready for the great American road trip.
The facts of the story are as follows.
The reporter rents a C40 Recharge from Hertz in Minneapolis.
He says the vehicle has 200 miles of indicated range (read: it probably wasn’t fully charged — the C40 offers 226 miles of EPA range), but knows that he has planned a 308-mile round-trip journey with deadlines.
He finds a single (6kW) charger while en route and stops to use it, but it’s Very Slow (“2%” added in 30 minutes).
He decides to go on anyway, hoping there will be more charging stations ahead (he does not appear to research this at all). There aren’t any.
He arrives at a farm near the South Dakota border with 20% charge remaining (45 miles) and charges the car on an AC wall outlet for 15 hours, adding 20 miles of range (so, 65 miles, presumably — this will become important later).
He decided that because there are no chargers within 50 miles of the farm, he has to call Hertz and have them tow the car, which they do, and he gets a ride with a friend back to Minneapolis.
Hertz charges him a $700 tow fee, and he works with Hertz PR to get this refunded because he believes the fee is unjust.
A few things come to mind.
First, I can’t even begin to understand how any of this is Hertz’s problem. This person used a rental vehicle in a way that was likely to leave it stranded and is blaming the rental company for this? Is this any different than renting a Ford Mustang and then blaming Hertz when it gets stuck on a washed-out dirt road in the backcountry? Did he even tell Hertz what his route was? Did he truly expect them to say something like, “Hey, this is probably going to mean planning your charging carefully”? His justification here is borderline ridiculous.
But Hertz deserves some blame too. The company rented me a car that was slow to charge, and did nothing to warn me about the dearth of charging stations outside of Minneapolis. Surprising me with a huge fee poured salt on the wound.
Second, his assertion that this was a “slow charging” car. Now, this is just flatly wrong — the C40 Recharge supports 149kW DC fast charging. While you’ll be lucky to find something like that out in the Minnesota sticks (barring Tesla Superchargers), a 50kW charger plugged in for an hour would likely have avoided this whole debacle.
Third, the whole chain of events here is a comedy of errors. I bothered to actually do some Google Maps sleuthing, and everything about this outcome was utterly avoidable. The reporter claims that a 6kW Blink charger was the “only” option on his way back to Minneapolis, but that was only after he’d passed a 50kW ChargePoint about 60 miles into his journey, presumably with around 140 miles of indicated range remaining on the C40. Had he stopped there and charged near to full, he’d have been able to hit the same station on the way back for a brief second charge before returning the car the next day.
This 50kW ChargePoint location was en route from the airport, where he likely rented his car
All this is to say: The person who ended up in this situation was a victim of their own ignorance. Nothing more, nothing less. In choosing to use a vehicle with an understood set of capabilities and limitations, he chose not to inform himself and instead ended up in a debacle whose summary analysis should have started and ended at “well, that was stupid of me.”
As icing on the cake, his claim about the car being unable to reach another charging station after adding 20 miles of range at the farmhouse overnight seems dubious. A ZEF 50kW station in Marshall, Minnesota, is at most 65 miles from wherever this person was headed, and likely a bit closer (I picked a town that would have actually made for a round trip longer than the 308 miles the reporter claimed).
If the article math is accurate, this 50kW ZEF station was reachable (and this origin point is likely farther than the one in reality)
The article says that the car showed no chargers “within 50 miles” of the farm, so presumably that means anything beyond that radius just… didn’t exist?
I get it: When traveling for work, considering the peculiarities and planning necessary for your means of conveyance is probably not the first thing on your mind. But when you’re taking a 300-plus-mile road trip in rural Minnesota in an electric car, you should probably be thinking about this stuff.
And as for Hertz refunding that $700 tow fee, while I’m not going to say I love anything about Hertz as a company, it sure seems like they did it to avoid the ire of The New York Times more than any belief this person had a valid grievance.
EVs aren’t complicated. This person’s trip was entirely feasible — with five minutes of planning. They chose not to put in that five minutes and ended up stranded. I don’t think electric cars or their infrastructure are to blame.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.More.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk threw shade at Waymo for having “rookie numbers” amid Tesla’s own disappointing autonomous-driving performance, raising the question: Is Elon Musk delusional or simply lying about Tesla’s Full Self-Driving?
Every year since 2018, Musk has alternately claimed that Tesla would solve self-driving “by the end of the year” or “next year.”
It never happened.
Tesla claimed a sort of victory this year with the launch of its “Robotaxi” service in Austin, Texas, but even that has been misleading since the service only operates a few vehicles in a geofenced area, something Musk has criticized Waymo for in the past, and unlike Waymo, Tesla has in-car supervisors with a finger on a killswitch to stop the vehicle in case of a potential accident.
Now, Musk called Waymo’s 2,500 fully autonomous vehicles currently in operation “rookie numbers”:
To put the comment in perspective, Tesla is believed to have about ~30 “Robotaxis” in its Austin fleet. In addition, Tesla claims to be operating “robotaxis” in the Bay Area with just over 100 cars, but it is officially considered a ride-hailing service because drivers are in the driver’s seat, and Tesla hasn’t even applied for an autonomous driving permit in California.
Tesla has also been pushing increasingly more misleading claims about its “Full Self-Driving” system being safer than humans.”
In the last few weeks, Tesla has repeatedly shared this misleading data as “proof” that its system is safer than humans:
This dataset is based on Tesla’s quarterly “Autopilot safety” report, which is known to be misleading.
There are three major problems with these reports:
Methodology is self‑reported. Tesla counts only crashes that trigger an airbag or restraint; minor bumps are excluded, and raw crash counts or VMT are not disclosed.
Road type bias. Autopilot is mainly used on limited‑access highways—already the safest roads—while the federal baseline blends all road classes. Meaning there are more crashes per mile on city streets than highways.
Driver mix & fleet age. Tesla drivers skew newer‑vehicle, higher‑income, and tech‑enthusiast; these demographics typically crash less.
With the new chart on the right above, Tesla appears to have separated Autopilot and FSD mileage, which gives us a little more data, but it still has all the same problems listed above, except the road-type bias is less pronounced, since FSD is also used on city streets.
However, many FSD drivers choose not to engage FSD in potentially dangerous or more difficult situations, especially in inclement weather, which contributes to many crashes – crashes that are counted in the human driver data Tesla is comparing itself against.
Lastly, it is unfair to say that the data proves FSD is safer than human drivers, as even with the flawed data, Tesla should claim that FSD with human supervision is safer than human drivers. It’s not FSD versus humans, it’s FSD plus humans versus humans.
It leads us to this.
With Tesla and Musk being undoubtedly wrong and misleading about the performance and the very nature of its current autonomous driving offering, I wanted to know your opinion about the situation through this poll:
Electrek’s Take
Personally, I think it’s a little of both.
I think he sometimes really believes Tesla is on the verge of solving autonomy, but at the same time, he is perfectly willing to cross the line and mislead people into thinking Tesla is further ahead than it actually is.
For example, I believe I can explain this comment about Waymo having “rookie numbers” despite the Alphabet company having about 10x more “robotaxis” than Tesla – even with Tesla’s very loose definition of a robotaxi.
Based on job listings across the US and his recent ridiculous comment that Tesla will magically cover half of the US population with robotaxis by the end of the year, I think Tesla is hiring thousands of drivers. Soon, it will put them in Model Ys with ‘Robotaxi’ stickers on them and have them drive on FSD and give rides in the Robotaxi app in several US cities.
Musk will claim that Tesla’s Robotaxi is now bigger than Waymo, even though it will basically be the equivalent of Uber drivers in Tesla cars with FSD, which is already the case. Just this week, I took an Uber from the Montreal airport, and it was in a Model Y with FSD. Has Tesla launched ‘Robotaxi’ in Montreal?
It’s either that or he counts consumer vehicles with FSD, which is even dumber.
In short, he is delusional, and when he realizes that he was wrong, he is willing to lie to cover things up.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.More.
Solar and wind are growing fast enough to meet all new electricity demand worldwide for the first three quarters of 2025, according to new data from energy think tank Ember. The group now expects fossil power to stay flat for the full year, marking the first time since the pandemic that fossil generation won’t increase.
Solar and wind aren’t just expanding; they’re outpacing global electricity demand itself. Solar generation jumped 498 TWh (+31%) compared to the same period last year, already topping all the solar power produced in 2024. Wind added another 137 TWh (+7.6%). Together, they supplied 635 TWh of new clean electricity, beating out the 603 TWh rise in global demand (+2.7%).
That lifted solar and wind to 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of the year, up from 15.2% year-over-year. That brought the total share of renewables in global electricity – solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy, and geothermal – to 43%. Fossil fuels slid to 57.1%, down from 58.7%.
Renewables are beating coal
For the first time in 2025, renewables collectively generated more electricity than coal. And fossil generation as a whole has stalled. Fossil output slipped slightly by 0.1% (-17 TWh) through the end of Q3. Ember expects no fossil-fuel growth for the full year, driven by clean power growth outpacing demand.
Advertisement – scroll for more content
China and India are partly driving that shift. In China, fossil generation fell 52 TWh (-1.1%) as clean energy met all new demand, resulting from a structural change in its power system. India saw fossil generation drop 34 TWh (-3.3%), thanks to record solar and wind growth and milder weather.
Solar is leading the charge
Solar is doing the heavy lifting. It’s now the single biggest driver of change in the global power sector, with growth more than three times larger than any other electricity source in the first three quarters of the year.
“Record solar power growth and stagnating fossil fuels in 2025 show how clean power has become the driving force in the power sector,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember. “Historically a growth segment, fossil power now appears to be entering a period of stagnation and managed decline. China, the largest source of fossil growth, has turned a corner, signaling that reliance on fossil fuels to meet growing power demand is no longer required.”
Electricity demand rose 2.7% in the first three quarters of 2025, far slower than the 4.9% jump seen last year when extreme heatwaves pushed up cooling demand in China, India, and the US. This year’s milder weather helped take some pressure off the grid, making it easier for clean energy to close the gap.
A turning point for the global power system
For the first time outside of major crises such as the pandemic or the global financial crash, clean energy growth has not only kept up with demand but surpassed it. The next big question: can solar, wind, and the rest of the clean power sector keep up this pace consistently? If they can, 2025 may be remembered as the year global fossil generation plateaued.
If you’re looking to replace your old HVAC equipment, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you’re finding a trusted, reliable HVAC installer near you that offers competitive pricing on heat pumps, check out EnergySage. EnergySage is a free service that makes it easy for you to get a heat pump. They have pre-vetted heat pump installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high quality solutions. Plus, it’s free to use!
Your personalized heat pump quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here. – *ad
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.More.
Genesis is taking luxury to the next level with its new flagship SUV. The GV90 is shaping up to be the brand’s most lavish vehicle yet, offering ultra-premium features like coach doors.
Genesis GV90 caught with coach doors in real life
After unveiling the Neolun Concept at the New York Auto Show last March, Genesis said it was a preview of its first full-size SUV.
The “ultra-luxe, state-of-the-art SUV,” as Genesis describes it, will be the brand’s largest and most luxurious vehicle yet, slotted above the GV80.
It wasn’t the stunning design or the over-the-top interior that caught most people’s attention, but the B-pillarless coach doors.
Advertisement – scroll for more content
Although we were worried that some of the ultra-premium features, like the coach doors, wouldn’t make it to the production model, new spy photos reveal otherwise.
A GV90 prototype was spotted out in public with the coach doors wide open, giving us our closest look at the setup. The new spy photos, courtesy of SH Proshots (via TheKoreanCarBlog), show the hinged door system in action and offer a glimpse of the interior.
Earlier this year, Hyundai Motor filed several patent applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, detailing new door latching devices.
Two patents, titled “Cinching Device For Door Latches in Vehicle” and “Door Latch Device for Vehicles,” offer a better idea of how the Genesis GV90’s coach doors will work.
Genesis has previously said that B-pillarless coach doors are now a reality in production vehicles. It looks like the GV90 will be the first to debut it.
Yes, the Genesis GV90 will be available with coach doors, but it likely won’t be standard on all trims. It could be a premium feature reserved for higher-priced variants. The GV90 has been spotted out in public several times now with a traditional door design. We’ve also caught a glimpse of other premium features it will offer, like adaptive air suspension.
The Genesis Neolun electric SUV concept (Source: Genesis)
Genesis has yet to reveal prices or final specs. We could see the GV90 debut by the end of the year, with sales expected to start in mid-2026.
One thing is for sure: The Genesis GV90 won’t be cheap. It’s expected to start around $100,000, but higher trims could cost upwards of $120,000.
Genesis Neolun electric SUV concept interior (Source: Hyundai Motor)
Earlier this week, a production version of the GV90 was caught for the first time driving in South Korea. It was still covered in camouflage, but from what’s shown, it looks nearly identical to the Neolun concept.
Reports suggest the flagship SUV could debut on Hyundai’s new eM platform. Hyundai claims the platform will deliver a 50% improvement in driving range per charge compared to its current EVs. It’s also expected to offer Level 3 autonomous driving and other advanced driver assist capabilities.
The flagship electric SUV will serve as a tech beacon, showcasing Hyundai’s latest tech and software. It’s expected to feature a massive 24″ curved infotainment as part of a digital cockpit design.
Genesis is also launching its first hybrid, the GV80, next year, and an extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) in late 2026 or early 2027. The luxury brand will also introduce a new off-road SUV as it expands into new segments.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.More.