One of the biggest motivators behind driving electric vehicles (EVs) is the idea that drivers get to skip the pump. With a home charger, they can recoup their daily commute overnight, and if they use solar panels to collect and then store this energy, it can be a “free” trip.
The problem is that this “green” energy use cuts out the gas station. At these stations, taxes are collected from the sales of gas to preserve and maintain the roads. Now, these EV drivers are cutting off that stream of tax revenue. Along with taking away the revenue, they are causing more damage to the road with their massively weighted-down vehicles.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Midwest Roadside Safety Facility announced the results of a crash test on a 2022 Rivian R1T. Plowing through the guardrail barrier, the truck barreled down the way until it hit a concrete barrier. According to Cody Stolle of the faculty, “We knew it was going to be an extremely demanding test of the roadside safety system. The system was not made to handle vehicles greater than 5,000 pounds.”
Done to see how the tens of thousands of miles in guardrails will fare against the new EVs, which weigh thousands of pounds more than their gas-powered counterparts. In conclusion, they deemed 5,000 pounds to be the maximum weight a guardrail could be expected to support or slow down effectively.
Carrying battery packs on board sends the weight on the roads skyrocketing. Tipping in at 20 to 50 percent heavier than those paying to fund the roads, they are doing significantly more damage when they crash, and even just riding down the roads. Traffic on bridges was designed with certain load ratings. While most bridges are overbuilt, over the last few years, we have seen how horrifically wrong they were.
As we have seen, these battery packs are essentially like driving around with a bomb strapped to your back, and they put people at unnecessary risk. With the realization of just how much “dead” weight they are rolling down the road with, we should be against it even more.
