OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Vice President Kamala Harris had another tedious moment on Friday as she was addressing an audience at an event in Falls Church, Va.
Speaking to students and faculty at Meridian High School, where she was joined by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan to introduce an initiative to boost electrified school buses.
“Think about it: Yellow school buses are our nation’s largest form of mass transit. How ’bout that? Every day —” she said, as it appeared that one person in the audience began to clap.
“So, yes, and let’s applaud because it gets ’em where they need to go!” said the vice president before emitting her trademark cackle.
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According to various reports, however, there are already problems with electric vehicles — especially buses.
Last July, for instance, a transit agency in California began deliberations over whether to scrap its fleet of electric buses manufactured by Proterra after one of them caught fire. Also, buses in the 10-year-old fleet were melting in the hot sun and had other problems as well. As an aside, Proterra manufactures the school buses Harris was touting.
As the Washington Free Beacon reported:
The Foothill Transit agency, which serves the valleys surrounding Los Angeles, will decide on Friday whether costly Proterra buses purchased in the last decade are still operable. Problems cited by the agency include not only the bus that caught fire in what’s described as a “thermal event,” but also buses that melt in the California heat and have transmission failures. Roland Cordero, the agency’s director of maintenance and vehicle technology, says the problems with the buses are exacerbated by Proterra’s inability to help with repairs.
“With the number of failures we are experiencing and the inability of Proterra to provide parts, these [Battery Electric Buses] BEBs will only get worse as we continue to operate them whenever the BEBs are available for service,” Cordero wrote ahead of an executive board meeting in which the agency debated taking Proterra buses out of service.
Foothill Transit board agenda: lots of problems with the Proterra buses, original buses essentially unusable with three years to go in FTA lifespan, even newer buses have under 50% availability some days. https://t.co/r5V8f2tbvN pic.twitter.com/nQsJMtsAhL
— Henry Fung (@calwatch) July 17, 2021
In May, the state-owned public transport operator in Paris, France — Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens — pulled out 149 electric buses from its fleet after two of them spontaneously exploded within the same month.
“The RATP decided to temporarily retire the electric vehicles after the second explosion occurred around 9 a.m. on April 29 near the François Mitterrand Library, according to reporting from the local newspaper Le Parisien and a RATP news release,” the Western Journal reported.
The outlet noted further:
Besides safety concerns, electric vehicles face other sets of problems, such as governments adding new taxes to compensate for revenue losses that came with incentives given to motorists for switching from gas-powered vehicles to electric ones.
On top of that are ethical concerns that arise due to the nature of the process of mining raw materials to make electric vehicles and the emissions involved therein.
Plus, the Biden administration is pushing for mass purchases of electric vehicles at a time when energy experts are predicting power outages throughout the Midwest and West over the summer due to the mandated closure of fossil fuel-burning power plants without bringing alternative sources of power generation online.
Blackouts and brownouts, especially in the Midwest and West, the analysis from the North American Electric Reliability Corp. warned.
“It’s a pretty sobering report, and it’s clear the risks are spreading,” John Moura, director of reliability assessment and performance analysis for the North American Electric Reliability Corp. warned in a news briefing.
“I certainly do think it’s our most cautionary tale here,” he said.
As for Harris, she has been ridiculed over word salad responses in the past.
Last week, the White House hosted the ASEAN summit when she spun a paragraph on climate change that got #WordSaladKamala trending on Twitter.
During a speech she said:
That is especially true when it comes to the climate crisis. Which is why we will work together, and continue to work together, to address these issues, to tackle these challenges, and to work together as we continue to work operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements, that we will convene to work together on. To galvanize global action. With that I thank you all. This is a matter of urgent priority for all of us. And I know we will work together.
In 22 seconds she used the phrase “work together” five times and used the synonym “galvanize” but never really got further than that.
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Kamala: "We will work together, and continue to work together, to address these issues…and to work together as we continue to work, operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements, that we will convene to work together…We will work on this together"pic.twitter.com/wrklQopoMQ
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) May 15, 2022
