3 August—The 28 July disquisition, Charge! Where?, ran as an op-ed in yesterday’s Republican-American. Among the comments to The Monitor—all positive, by the way—is this one from a particularly astute RA reader (and new Monitor reader?) from Watertown on additional downsides to going electric:

“Love your column in today’s Waterbury Republican American. I have a couple dozen more downsides to going electric too. But one big one is sitting in your car while your EV is charging at a station. Say you’re sitting in your Tesla, charging in Waterbury, Torrington or my town of Watertown. You don’t think someone will come up on you, hit the butt end of their firearm on your window while you’re distracted on your phone or what have you. Point the gun and say get out of the car? With the 14- and 15-year-olds constantly stealing cars, this is an epidemic waiting to happen! Bad enough getting gas.

“Have to sit for a charge for half-hour? Can you say vulnerable? And I have to get this in. Did the government build gas stations around the county in the 1920s, 1930s, etc? You built one, you paid for it. Hopefully you built one in the right place. Then the interstate highway system came along and displaced many of them. The government didn’t build gas stations. But. You and I will build charging stations. Just makes my head explode when these politicians talk.”

Excellent points. With carjacking and vehicle theft at filling stations and convenience stores where cars are parked for only a few minutes already quite a risk even in bucolic Litchfield County, imagine what car thieves could accomplish when cars are sitting for a half hour, occupied or otherwise.

After suffering through a battery-draining traffic jam and praying you’ll be able to make it to a charging station, who wants to sit in a car for another half hour to get a battery charged? (We’ll have to stop saying get a tank filled.) So enterprising charging stations doubtless will offer facilities (like boutique arcades, peep shows, bedrooms, gyms, and bars) to keep customers occupied while their unoccupied electric vehicles are being charged. And don’t expect the facilities and amusements to be free.

In all events, that’s bound to make it even more tempting for thieves to hack into the digitally controlled unoccupied vehicles and casually drive them away. Note that semi-literate and even totally illiterate juvenile delinquents are nevertheless adept at hacking. No threats or violence required. (And no jail time in Connecticut if they’re caught, of course.) Not that the latest internal combustion and hybrid vehicles can’t be hacked, to be sure, but it’ll be more convenient, easier pickings, with more to cars choose from at charging stations.

And, of course, all the charging stations will be subsidized with taxpayer dollars . . .