The arctic cold front that swept through much of the United States seemed to have exposed the limitations of electric vehicles when users attempt to operate and charge them in cold weather, but one reticent EV user’s testimony drives home a different point: the infrastructure just does not seem to be there yet.

Political commentator Jason Rantz experienced first-hand how a short road trip can quickly become a nerve-racking ordeal when undertaken in an EV during frigid conditions.

Rantz wrote an op-ed recently published by Fox News recounting an evening a week earlier when he was given an EV as a rental because the car rental company had run out of gas-powered cars. He prefaced his story by citing the International Council on Clean Transportation, which says that by 2030, the federal government will require 2.4 million charging stations to service all the EVs predicted to be on the road. At present, there are only about 169,000 charging stations around the country.

He then recounted how a simple 90-minute drive to a wedding venue east of Seattle turned into an ordeal when try as he might, he could not reach a charging station in time to recharge and make the return trip home.

“As I drove to the wedding venue, I was nearly glued to the dashboard, watching a dwindling battery percentage. Just when I thought everything would be OK, I encountered hills. EV batteries do not like hills,” Rantz said.

He described a desperate search for a charging station on the way back that turned up a block of chargers for Teslas that were not compatible with his EV brand. Rantz eventually found himself stranded in a car without power on the side of the freeway “in the middle of nowhere” in “the pitch black” night with temperatures hovering below freezing.

After hours of trying and failing to get aid from the rental company or secure a tow, Rantz eventually made it to his home by calling Uber and spending well over $100 for the ride.

Rantz noted that Washington is among the states most aggressively pushing the EV transition. “At least 13 states, including Washington, California, New York, and Virginia, plus D.C., mandate new car sales to be EVs by 2035,” he wrote. “… The battery technology isn’t where it needs to be to make EVs worthwhile, and the prices aren’t low enough for most families to comfortably purchase (you can thank Bidenomics for that). Yet Democrats continue to force EVs on us.”

Relatedly, a group of former military officials recently warned that the Biden administration’s rush to implement the EV transition is overwhelming the infrastructure needed to support it.

Rantz pointed out that temperatures in Washington state hit historic lows in January, and the state’s largest energy supplier asked customers to lower their power consumption to “reduce strain on the grid,” a notion Texans have been more than familiar with in recent years.

As The Dallas Express reported, Tesla superchargers in Illinois failed in the freezing temperatures brought on by the arctic storm earlier this month, leaving massive backups and abandoned cars throughout the Chicago area.

A Reader’s Note on X, responding to the many articles about the freezing Tesla charging stations, stated that not just electric cars suffer in extreme cold:

“Teslas DO charge in freezing conditions. All EVs along with [internal combustion engine] cars struggle with range & in extreme conditions, diesel-powered cars can actually freeze fuel lines. It is also NOT just Tesla public chargers that can suffer in extremes.”