I honestly would like to know whether or not the editors at the Cape Gazette even do a cursory checking of the facts presented in a letter to the editor before said letter is published. A case in point is the recent letter regarding Gov. Carney’s climate action plan by Edwin Hiebsch. Hiebsch apparently has some serious issues with the continued adoption of electric vehicles. He also makes some very interesting claims. Before I go on, let me state that I am a very happy owner of a 2019 Jaguar I-PACE battery electric vehicle with around 12,000 miles on the clock.
Hiebsch claims special tires are needed for EVs. Not true. Most of the tires on EVs are standard high-performance tires. The tires on my I-PACE are plain Goodyear Eagle All Season 245/50R20. Those can be found on many a sports car. They also come with a 50,000-mile warranty. Also, contrary, to Hiebsch's assertion, those tires can be had for about $200 on Amazon and about $180 at Wal-Mart; not $500 to $800, as Hiebsch wrote.
Then Hiebsch makes an even more bizarre statement: The batteries in EVs only last three years. Funny about that, because I have had my I-PACE for a hair over three years now and the battery seems to be doing just fine. Even more amusing is the fact that the warranty given by Jaguar on the battery in my I-PACE is eight years or 100000 miles! Another fun fact: According to Consumer Reports, the average life span of a EV battery is around 17 years or 200,000 miles without significant degradation.
Further Hiebsch states that most houses come with a 100-amp service panel. Well, interestingly enough, at least here in Delaware, the standard is 200-or-higher-amp panels.
I won’t even go into the other claims Hiebsch makes.
Finally, I would like to point out the source of all this false information Hiebsch presents. It comes from the International Climate Science Coalition. It is a coalition of well-known climate change deniers, funded partially by the Heartland Institute. This is the same Heartland Institute that, to a great extent, funded the Tea Party movement, worked with tobacco company Philip Morris to question the link between smoking and lung disease and received close to $1 million from ExxonMobile. They apparently also have plagiarized, falsified and misrepresented other scientists/institutions reports and findings to support their claims.
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