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For the first time in my life I now own a car, and it’s electric.
It took me a few weeks to narrow down my choices to a Hyundai Kona or a Ford Mustang Mach E. After much agonizing comparison, I went with the Kona. While I liked the Mach E’s sporty performance, longer range, and sizable front trunk, ultimately the Kona’s cheaper price, lighter materials, heat pump, and numerous mechanical buttons clinched the deal. After trading in a clapped out 2011 Subaru Impreza, the out-the-door sticker price for the Kona was a bit over $31,000 (though we opted to lease).
Owning and driving an EV has been an instructive experience. I’ve long been a vocal proponent of going electric, but I was honestly surprised by the learning curve. As the automotive journalist Edward Neidermeyer continually points out, an EV simply is not a perfect drop-in replacement for an internal combustion car. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make it work, even for long trips, even in fairly bedraggled parts of the country like northeastern Pennsylvania, where I live, and even with a modest battery and range.
First, the buying experience. The nearest Kona for sale I could find was a 70-mile drive away from Wilkes-Barre to Easton, and the dealership let me take it home so my wife could check it out. This led to the first of several comical lessons. The car had only about a 60 percent charge when I left the dealership, and drained down to 33 percent when I got back home. So before going back to sign the lease papers, it would need a top-up.
I searched on Google Maps for chargers and blithely set out to fill up. It turns out Rust Belt cities like the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area are not exactly bursting with EV charging infrastructure. The first one I found was a free employee charger at a charter school. Out of curiosity I plugged it in. It did in fact work — and if I had been willing to sit there stealing 6 kilowatts of power for 10 hours, I could have gotten up to 100 percent. This seemed less than ideal. I then tried another charger around the corner at a used dealership. This one had a credit card reader but it did not work.
Scrolling through Google some more, I discovered that if you poke around in the menus it actually tells you the supposed speed of each charger (rated as slow, fast, very fast, or ultra fast). A 10-minute drive across the river was a non-Tesla fast charger at a Chevy dealership, though irritatingly I had to download an app and connect my Apple pay to make it work instead of just tapping my credit card.
Then I learned that the temperature of the battery matters a great deal. When I first plugged in, the charger delivered a measly 28 kilowatts. But then as the battery warmed up, that nearly doubled to 49 kilowatts (as compared to the Kona’s claimed maximum rate of 100 kilowatts). That isn’t particularly fast — but it also demonstrated another lesson, which is that there are advantages to a smaller battery, at just 65 kilowatt-hours. That fairly pitiful charging speed, topping out at less than a seventh of the maximum at modern stations, was still enough to get me from 28 percent to 75 percent in about 35 minutes. If I had been driving a Hummer EV, it would have been more like two hours.
That lesson was underlined charging at home. My house was built in the 1940s and has no outdoor outlets whatsoever, but in the pinch, I could string an extension cord out the window to use the included level 1 charger … to deliver a pathetic 600 watts, or less than the power supply on my gaming PC. Yet this was still enough to add 10-12 percent of charge per day, or about 30 miles, which is more than we drive on average. If I’d gone with the Mach E, it would be more like 20 miles, thanks to its bigger battery.
I learned a more serious lesson the next day going down to sign the paperwork. My wife had to come with me to the dealership, since she owned the Subaru, and therefore my 2-month-old son had to come along as well. With a 75 percent charge, I figured we’d be fine to make it there and back. When we got to the dealership, the car still had 48 percent — surely more than enough to make it back given my prior trip, right?
But then we had to sit at the dealership for three hours thanks to some incomprehensible financing dispute going on in a back room. By the time we finished, moved the car around several times, and grabbed some food on the way out, it was only about 42 percent by the time we got going. As we headed up Route 33, the Kona’s computer informed us we’d arrive with about 35 miles of range to spare. Since it was already well past the boy’s bedtime and I really, really didn’t want to hunt around in the cold for a charger that might or might not work, I decided to risk it.
But by this point it was well past dark, and the temperature was dropping into the low 40s. Meanwhile, what with wife and baby in the back seat, I had to run the heater much more than I had the first time, when I had left the cabin heater low and just used the seat warmer.
It turns out heating and driving uphill sucks battery power. As the temperature fell further into the low 30s, and the Kona zipped up the long grades at Wind Gap and Tannersville, I watched with increasing alarm as the buffer mileage dropped to 30, then 25, then 20. I told myself I would stop to charge if it got below 10 miles of buffer, but it finally stabilized around 15 miles in the Poconos.
It was a genuine case of range anxiety, no question about it, and my wife was ready to strangle me. But there was one last surprise as we crested the ridge and headed down into the Wyoming Valley. On that long downslope, I alternated between coasting and turning up the regenerative braking around corners, which got back another 14 miles of range. We pulled up with 15 percent battery and 29 miles to spare — not so far off the original estimate after all!
This need for planning is the major difference between electric and gas, at least given the current state of America’s charging infrastructure. With a gas car you can assume that range will not change much depending on the weather, that you can run your tank nearly empty with the sole penalty being another few seconds of standing at the pump, and that even the tiniest settlement is virtually guaranteed to have a gas station.
But on an EV trip of any distance you want to charge early and often, and that means some careful route planning. A theoretical 270 mile range means you have more like 160-220 miles you can realistically use, depending significantly on the temperature, wind, number of passengers, and so on. But unless you are in an exceptionally cold and/or depopulated area, it’s not that big of a deal. Just find some charging stations on the route, ideally with good reviews, and stop every hour or two for 20-30 minutes of charging, or less if your car can take mega voltage like the Ioniq 5. (There are several chargers in East Stroudsburg I could have used, for instance.)
You can’t cannonball to cut the trip time down to the absolute minimum, but you also get a chance to stretch out regularly and cut your risk of deep vein thrombosis. Meanwhile, if you can charge at home, your cost of fuel goes down dramatically. I now spend maybe $3 on a week’s worth of driving electricity.
So yes, there are some tradeoffs that come with the EV lifestyle. But even for an EV with a modest battery, driving in the cold mountains of impoverished Appalachia, they are not remotely insurmountable — and everything will only get easier from here on out. More chargers are being built all the time, and soon Tesla’s network will open up to all. You don’t need a 500-mile range battery, or to carry a backup generator around. It just takes a change in mindset.
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Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “super soaker” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the super soaker collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the super soaker collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the super soaker, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Friday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for some of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Six major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event last week:
Officials are investigating the cause of the fires and have not made any public statements yet. Early eyewitness accounts suggest that the Eaton Fire may have started at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison. So far, the company has maintained that an analysis of its equipment showed “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” A Washington Post investigation found that the Palisades Fire could have risen from the remnants of a fire that burned on New Year’s Eve and reignited.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At more than 40,000 acres burned total, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 9,000 structures damaged as of Friday morning, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 5,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between wet and dry years over the past eight decades.
But climate change is expected to make dry years drier and wet years wetter, creating a “hydroclimate whiplash,” as Daniel Swain, a pre-eminent expert on climate change and weather in California puts it. In a thread on Bluesky, Swain wrote that “in 2024, Southern California experienced an exceptional episode of wet-to-dry hydroclimate whiplash.” Last year’s rainy winter fostered abundant plant growth, and the proceeding dryness primed the vegetation for fire.
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Editor’s note: This story was last update on Monday, January 13, at 10:00 a.m. ET.
On tough questioning from the Senate, LA’s fires, and EV leases
Current conditions: Odd weather has caused broccoli and cauliflower plants to come up far too early in the UK • Another blast of Arctic air is headed for the Midwest • An air quality alert has been issued in Los Angeles due to windblown dust and ash.
Firefighters in Los Angeles are scrambling to make progress against the ongoing wildfires there before dangerous winds return. The Palisades and Eaton fires have now been burning for almost a week, charring nearly 40,000 acres, damaging more than 12,000 structures, and leaving at least 24 people dead. They are 13% and 27% contained, respectively. Residents who lost their homes are desperately trying to find new properties to rent or buy in a tight market, with reports of intense bidding wars as landlords hike rents. The economic toll of this disaster is estimated to be between $135 billion and $150 billion. Red flag warnings are in effect today, with critical fire conditions and extreme wind gusts forecast through Wednesday.
Red fire retardant on pool furniture. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
A few updates on the incoming administration: President-elect Donald Trump tapped Ed Russo to run an advisory environmental task force. Trump said Russo will oversee “initiatives to create great jobs and protect our natural resources, by following my policy of CLEAN AIR and CLEAN WATER. Together, we will achieve American Energy DOMINANCE, rebuild our Economy, and DRILL, BABY, DRILL.” Russo is a longtime Trump loyalist who served as an environmental consultant to the Trump Organization and wrote a book titled “Donald J. Trump: An Environmental Hero”.
Trump also announced his deputies for some key environmental and energy Cabinet positions over the weekend, including:
More than a dozen of Trump’s Cabinet nominees face Senate confirmation hearings this week. Doug Burgum, who is up for interior secretary, has a hearing before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources tomorrow. Energy secretary nominee Chris Wright has one on Wednesday. EPA nominee Lee Zeldin has one with the Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday.
Affordable EV leases are “the car market’s hottest deal,” according toThe Wall Street Journal. Car companies are changing the way they pitch EVs to buyers, offering short-term leases with low monthly payments. These deals are attractive to first-time EV shoppers who are still a little bit hesitant to commit, as well as people on a tighter budget. Roughly 45% of EV transactions at the end of 2024 were leases, much higher than the auto industry as a whole. And a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act means leased cars can more easily qualify for the government’s $7,500 EV tax credit. “The proliferation of lease deals has made EVs more accessible to buyers who couldn’t afford their higher sticker prices,” the Journal said. “For the automakers, it is helping get more EVs into customers’ hands after a choppy start for their electric-car operations.”
Wind power could overtake coal in Europe for electricity generation for the first time this year, according to the energy think tank Ember. At the end of 2024, wind power was closing in on coal, coming in at just 4% below the fossil fuel in power generation as the continent’s coal plants close. “That output gap could easily be made up over the course of 2025 by an increase in regional wind generation capacity or by higher average wind speeds at turbine level, or by some combination of both,” Reutersreported. Last year wind power accounted for 20% of electricity consumed in the EU, and the goal is to get that up to 50% by 2050. But as Electreknoted, the same problems plaguing projects in the U.S. – permitting delays and connection bottlenecks – are slowing things down. The EU accounts for 4.6% of global power sector emissions.
The World Health Organization’s European Centre for Environment and Health has issued a callout for “examples of interventions to protect and promote mental health in the face of climate change.” The group wants to take stock of these interventions so that it can identify gaps in mental health care and share some best practices. The callout is aimed at Europe only, but it is indicative of a growing awareness of how the worsening climate crisis is taking a toll on mental health worldwide.
“There’s a lot of finger-pointing going around, and I would just try to emphasize that this is a really complex problem. We have lots of different responsible parties. To me, what has happened requires more of a rethink than a blame game.” –Faith Kearns, a water and wildfire researcher at Arizona State University, speaking to Heatmap about the spread of misinformation around the LA fires