Tesla’s Out of Juice. But Are EVs?
Slate Daily Feed
Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2024
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The hype has slowed but electric vehicles aren’t going away—once the infrastructure is in place, they’ll go everywhere.
Guests:
Nitish Pahwa, associate writer for business and tech at Slate.
Paula Gardner, business reporter for Bridge Michigan
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.
Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, and Cheyna Roth.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | So you're on a road trip right now. Where are you? |
| 0:11.1 | We woke up this morning in Boyne Falls. We rolled in around 9.30, maybe 10 o'clock last night after a fairly long drive from Traverse City, where we found one of four fast chargers, |
| 0:24.5 | the other three were broken, and we desperately needed the fast charge. |
| 0:30.6 | Paula Gardner is a business reporter for Bridge, Michigan. |
| 0:33.8 | We used to work together at M-Live. |
| 0:36.3 | A few weeks ago, Paula and two other Bridge reporters set out in a Chevy Bolt across Michigan. |
| 0:42.4 | They're taking something called the Lake Michigan Circuit, a cross-state route that officials have promised you can do with an EV, not a hybrid, a fully electric vehicle. |
| 0:52.9 | There are wonderful places to go in Michigan and also better places that we could be going if we wanted consistent fast charging. |
| 1:00.0 | But instead we're doing this route. We feel like this is the tourist route. |
| 1:04.0 | This is what people might be tempted to do. And there's also been some promises on the background telling us that it would be possible. |
| 1:11.8 | The Lake Michigan Circuit follows the Lake Michigan coastline. Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, |
| 1:16.5 | and Indiana have been working to create a route along the 1,100-mile, drivable coastline that is EV-friendly. |
| 1:24.0 | But Paula says they've hit plenty of snags along the way, a big one being charging the car. |
| 1:30.8 | We had a crisis yesterday. We realized that, you know, the math was not in our favor and that we were cutting it way too close between two stops. |
| 1:40.7 | And there was no real alternative because the last stop was the closest charger. |
| 1:46.0 | So we just kind of closed our eyes except for the driver and crossed our fingers and made it with probably no charge to spare. |
| 1:56.0 | Michigan is known for its cars, but EVs are proving to be a whole other beast here and everywhere else in the U.S. |
| 2:06.2 | Not too long ago, there was excitement about EVs. |
| 2:10.2 | They were shedding their crunchy hippie image. |
| 2:13.1 | Tesla had kind of made them cool. |
| 2:16.0 | But then the tide began to turn. |
| 2:19.1 | Electric vehicles may save drivers on the cost of filling up, but this winter, growing frustrations for drivers stuck waiting at charging stations. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.