It’s winter in Barronenberg, Minnesota, where temperatures reach negative numbers regularly. This town of nearly 10K people was the first in the state to invest in electric school buses. Unfortunately, the decision has backfired.
“One of the buses stopped working,” said School Superintendant Joe Barron, “The problem was, we had no idea. The kids were cold and in real danger.”
The bus, fully charged when it left the lot, lost more than 90 percent of its power in the cold and stopped dead on a winding road that very few cars travel. Without power, they had no two-way radio, and there was no cell phone service. “We just had to wait,” said bus driver Steve Ashbaucher.
And wait they did. By the time somebody got to them, three of the children were in danger of frostbite and all of them were weeping and distraught. “It was a nightmare,” said Ashbaucher.
Luckily, the children were all rescued safely and returned to their parents. On further investigation, the county sheriff’s office determined that the bus was functioning properly. “It would seem that the issue was user-induced, and not some fault with the technology,” said spokesman Joe Barron, “The driver was using the bus as a meth lab between runs, which caused a significant drain on the battery, resulting in the breakdown.”
Ashbaucher was taken into custody and sent back to Indiana to face pending charges for stealing a case of beef tenderloin from Kroger and selling it for Facebook profiles. The school bus was charged up, disinfected, and sent back into service without incident.
This is why we can’t trust electric vehicles, folks. If they get used as roadside meth labs, our children’s lives may be at risk. God Bless America.
