4 dead, 1 injured - Yes, it was a Tesla

Four people are dead and another is in hospital after a car driving through downtown Toronto at a high rate of speed crashed into a guardrail and struck a concrete pillar on Lake Shore Boulevard, just after midnight today.

Of course any vehicle that hits a guardrail at 70 or 80 mph is likely to be written off, but it may not have been the impact alone that resulted in the casualties. A Toronto FD inspector said "the vehicle lost control, struck a guardrail and then struck a concrete pillar. Upon impact, the vehicle then caught fire." And yes, it was a Tesla.

When firefighters arrived on scene, they discover a "significant fire", said Deputy Fire Chief Jim Jessop. "Our crews worked to quickly extinguish the fire and then, once the fire was extinguished, our crews noted a number of persons inside the vehicle. Under the direction of the coroner's office and the Toronto Police Service, Toronto firefighters carefully extricated the bodies, and they are now in the care of the Office of the Chief Coroner."

Images like the one above showed the charred and crumpled vehicle being hauled away from the site of the crash. Chief Jessop went on to say that the intensity of the fire was "directly linked" to the battery cells in the Tesla, and noted that "thermal runaway" has been a growing concern with lithium-ion-powered devices.

He explained that lithium-ion battery packs have been known to reignite, even weeks after an initial fire, so "we had to take extra care this morning in reopening the Lakeshore...and removing and transporting one of the battery packs that was ejected during the collision. We worked with Transportation Services, Solid Waste and Parks and Recreation to arrange for a dumpster to arrive where the Toronto Fire Service placed the ejected cell into the dumpster, covered it with sand, and we have escorted that that dumpster up to a yard to make sure that it is safely disposed of."

Walt is happy to see Elon Musk working assiduously for the re-election of President Trump [Good on yer, sir! Ed.] but that doesn't mean you should go out and buy one of his (or anybody's) sparky cars.

UPDATED: Electric vehicles: not so green after all!

Breitbart News has been covering the Globalist American Empire summer camp, in progress [Geddit? Ed.] this week in Sun Valley ID. Those attending are the right-thinking progressive liberals who plan our future in such a way that they always manage to come out on top.

One of the things they have in mind for us, part of Sleepy Joe's Green New Deal, is forced conversion from vehicles which run on fossil fuels to the greener cleaner ones that run on electricity. Pretty soon, they tell us, everyone will be driving a Tesla or Chevy Volt [Didn't GM cancel those? Ed.], because gas-powered vehicles will no longer be manufactured in North America. Elon Musk will be so pleased!

We should be pleased too (they tell us) what with gas having risen last weekend to their highest prices since 2014, and further increases expected as the Biden-Harris cancellation of Keystone XL and other pipelines leads, as surely as day follows night, to shortages of the lifeblood of American transportation.

"Where am I gonna get the juice?" is a question motorists should be asking as they contemplate making the big switcheroo to a car that runs on batteries. "Range reluctance" is one of the two biggest reasons people have for wanting to stick with their old gas-guzzlers. (Sticker shock is the other. Have you priced a Tesla lately?)

Walt wonders if forced electrification is part of the Democratic (in Canada, read: Liberal) conspiracy against those of us who live in rural areas. The billions of dollars that are to be spent on "building a modern and sustainable infrastructure" [direct quote from Joe's website. Ed.] will be spent in places like New York and San Francisco, not Fort Mudge! Charging stations will be readily accessible to liberal city dwellers, but what will we do for fuel, out here in the boonies?

The liberal elites have an answer for that. It looks like this.

Yes, campers, it's an electric charging station that runs on diesel. They’re popping up everywhere! This one appears to be somewhere in the Nullarbor Plain, an almost trackless waste which stretches across the southern edge of Australia between the goldfields of Western Australia and the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.

You'd think there would be solar power aplenty in such a place, but apparently they have the same problem -- how to store the eneregy until someone comes along to recharge his Holden Volt. Better to use a reliable (if politically incorrect) generator like this 350kw beauty. It uses 12 gallons of diesel fuel per hour, and it takes 3 hours to charge a car enough to go another 200 miles. That's 36 gallons for 200 miles -- 5.6 mpg! How “green” is that?!

Thanks and a tip of the Aussie outback hat (the one with the corks dangling from the brim) to Agent 6, who often drives 100s of miles a day in gas- and diesel-powered vehicles.

Note from Ed.: "Nullarbor" is derived from the Latin words for "no" + "trees". You already knew that, eh.

UPDATE ADDED 18/7/21: Further reading: "It's Time to Unplug the Hype Over Electric Vehicles", by Robert Bryce, on Real Clear Energy, 11/7/21.