I'm glad our Tesla got forked (by a forklift)
At first it felt like a waste for our Tesla to get totaled, but not anymore.
“I’m sorry to tell you that your Tesla got forked, and suffered extensive damage.”
The barge company representative in Juneau went on to explain that they had only just opened the shipping container, after it had been sitting on their lot for a month. Like a magic trick gone wrong, the container had been run through by a forklift, along with the Tesla Model X that we had traded in for a Prius. We’d gotten the Prius weeks before (unforked), and the Tesla was now technically owned by the used car dealership—but they never picked it up. So now they owned a totaled Tesla.
I felt my cheeks reddened with regret over trading in the car, so it wouldn’t have gone to waste like that. Then I wondered if any of it was salvageable, if the battery could be reused. Then it occurred to me that it could be some kind of insurance fraud by the dealership because they didn’t think they’d be able to resell a Model X 75D with less than 200 miles of range. I went to sleep that night hating all cars and wishing I’d never spent so many of my lunch breaks arranging the trade-in.
But, in the end, it wasn’t our car anymore, so it wasn’t our problem.
Why we traded in our Tesla
We’d decided to trade it in for a few reasons. The impetus was so we wouldn’t have to make car payments anymore, and we’d have better luck getting a loan for the house we’d been trying to buy while renting it for the winter. We’d been denied by one bank where we tried to assume the loan at a super low interest rate, and even with a different bank we worried about getting any home loan. “Debt-to-income-ratio” and all. We wound up having to pay into the car deal to pay off the loan on the Tesla and get the 2020 Prius, but it would still look better on paper to not have a car loan. And there were other reasons we were going away from Tesla.
The insurance was expensive, since it was a “luxury” car. Read on to see why I use air quotes around “luxury.”
Parts were expensive, including brakes, which they will tell you won’t need to be replaced as often because they aren’t used as much in an electric car with regenerative braking, but they actually got trashed because they weren’t used enough to ever warm up and dry out so they seized on the rotors and trashed them too.
The Tesla leaked in the rain. I kept a kayak bailing sponge in the trunk to mop up the inches of water that accumulated every week, submerging the nest of wires under the floor panel, and causing mold to flourish on the folded down third row seats. I’d replaced a cracked window in the top of one of the falcon wing doors, but that turned out not to be where the leak was. I still don’t know where it was. The house we were trying to buy had a garage that we could almost fit the Tesla into, which helped, but even parking the car outside at work for the day made the water rise. At least the charger could stay dry in the garage though. I’d had to replace that after plugging into an extension cord across a sidewalk for over a year at the previous house we’d rented. The Prius is a tight fit in the garage too, but at least the garage door closes now.
Tires were also expensive for the Tesla, even on smaller after-market 19-inch wheels, and the 6,000 lb Model X burned through them.
The steering squeaked horribly until I hosed it down with lithium grease, the recommended fix from my online research, as opposed to actually replacing the unprotected and worn-out steering linkage which would require removing the frunk and the 12-volt battery and the HVAC system, probably at a Tesla dealership (of which there are none in Alaska).
The suspension also squeaked and would need work eventually, since it was designed for the smaller Model S, and wasn’t happy supporting the body of an SUV, especially not on dirt roads with a few hundred pounds of frozen salmon in the back.
Why we bought a Tesla in the first place
I’d been infatuated with the idea that electric cars cost less to own. But I was wrong. And I thought Elon Musk wanted to do good for humanity. But I was wrong. I applied to be an astronaut around that time also, since I thought Elon Musk was smart and did cool things with his money, and I was the primary caretaker for our newborn and two-year-old, so I had maybe too much time to think and obsess over things. I thought electric cars were better for the environment, which I question now too. When I was delivering salmon in Colorado, I often drove 100-mile days. And I felt guilty about it, knowing that contributing to climate change was bad for the wild salmon that I loved to catch and sell. That was part of what enticed me about electric cars too—I could plug in a freezer in the back (probably voiding the warranty) and worry less about it thawing out even on the hottest Colorado summer days.
The Tesla also had “dog mode” (read on to understand the air quotes), so we could leave our dog in the car for trips into the grocery store and the cabin would stay a safe temperature in winter or summer, but with the controls and doors all locked. As it turns out this also works for kids, while I brought salmon to people’s doors and schmoozed with them about fishing and Alaska.
With a home charger, we saved some of the extra driving and time required to go out of our way to a gas station a couple times a week. Charging at home was cheaper, but we probably never recouped the $1,000 to buy and install the home charger, let alone the solar panels, which we’re still paying $600 a month for, while our renters reap the lower electric bills.
And what motivated me to bring the Tesla on our move to Alaska was that Petersburg runs completely on hydropower. So the carbon footprint of driving an electric car in my rainy home town is even less than it was charging it at our house with solar panels in sunny Colorado.
But the Tyee hydro plant needs a $20 million upgrade, to keep up with increased demand for electricity, not due to increased population (too rainy for most), but increased adoption of heat pumps in houses. I’m sure more electric cars will put more burden on the hydropower plant too. And we only live two miles from town. Very few people really need to drive on this island. But the residents of Petersburg see the same car commercials as the rest of America, and have been led to believe that independent car ownership constitutes some kind of freedom, even when everything we need is in a mile radius.
Why bikes are better
Bikes come from factories too, and mines, but there is so much less that goes into them. I suppose my bike does have a computer and a battery (just for the headlight—I aim to stick with acoustic bikes), but there’s not much else to it. Certainly nothing that can only be worked on in a dealership.
My bike cannot be hacked and potentially hijacked, like a Tesla with full autopilot.
My bike will not generate enough profit to turn the tide of an election. No one can tell what brand it is from more than 20 feet away, and very few people care. I got it used on the island for $200. We brought our chariot bike/ski/jogging stroller from Colorado, which was used for maybe $100. I’ve bought a few hundred dollars worth of tires and inner tubes and brake pads and chain grease and lights, and have been able to commute with our two kids over half the days this school year (it’s been a weak snow year here).
My bike’s derailleur could use a professional tune-up, but I’m learning. I’m also learning how to spell derailleur.
After biking for a few months, my pants are looser in the waist and tighter in the thigh. My knee is a little creaky, but my lungs don’t hold me back anymore on my long weekend runs (when I convert the bike trailer to jogging stroller, so our blind dog can keep up).
Even when my wife drives the car to town most days to bring our blind dog to my parents house, we enjoy the flexibility bikes add to the equation. It helps us not need a second car, at the very least. And I suppose the car gets a tad better mileage without three extra bodies in it.
On my bike I feel the wind and often rain on my face, and smell the ocean from where it lies mere feet below the bike path. I see familiar boats pass with different gear depending on what’s in season. Different birds, most of which I can’t name, but I can hear the sound of their hundreds of wings when I bike past and spook them. I spot ice chunks from the creek at breakup time, and can tell which way the tide is running by closely watching them, or floating birds.
Why it’s complicated
Biking to live would not be feasible where we lived in Colorado. Seven miles from the nearest town, which had a grocery store, hardware store, and post office, but no dentist, hospital, pharmacy, or airport. I suppose you could bike there, then take the bus to Boulder and Denver. But that would require more commitment than I can muster with two kids.
But the point is there are ways to minimize our impact on the environment without spending more money. There are ways that are funner than electric cars, and better for our health. There are ways that help us slow down, build leisure and adventure into our days, connect with the environment and our bodies that we claim to care so much about. Spend time shaping our lives so we can commute less, spend less, need less, and have more free time.
Mariah admitted that she was a little sad to see our Tesla go, that it felt like giving up on my dream. That it broke her heart a little to remember how much hope I’d had for the future. How I had convinced her to get the car and we had loved it and gotten used to it and I imagined that we were doing the best we could with the little extra cash we had at the time. I’d been reading Wendell Berry, who argued for doing the best you can for the world every day. I figured having money from our vacation rental sitting around wasn’t helping anyone, so I might as well invest it in the future of the planet.
Little did I know that buying a Tesla would be my first campaign contribution, possibly swaying the 2025 election more than all of my impact in every other election combined in which I merely voted. Part of me is happy that we sold the Tesla before we knew how messed up Musk is, but he still got our money. I like to think we would have had the guts to sell the Tesla for moral reasons alone after the Musk bought the 2025 election, but I guess we’ll never know. I would have felt like even more of a dick driving it though, and I’m sure we wouldn’t be able to get as much money for it now. Another thing Wendell Berry said: “Don’t let the bastards get a hold of your money.”
So now I’m glad our Tesla got forked. One of our friends who worked on tugboats said that it happens all the time. The drivers of the big forklifts that lift shipping containers don’t even notice it if they accidentally skewer the forks through the corrugated steel wall of a container. Every day a container sits at the freight yard it’s just a ticking time bomb waiting to get forked. It wasn’t intentional, by us, or by anyone probably, but I’m glad that there will be one less Tesla on the road. One less campaign ad.
A lot has changed in our lives and in the world since we bought the Tesla. Even taking out a loan for it seemed like a noble debt to take on. I imagined what to say to people if they asked how I could afford to drive a Tesla. “I felt like I couldn’t afford not to.” To live with driving 100 miles a day. To make a statement to our friends and neighbors that a Tesla could survive in the mountains of Colorado, and be used for work. There’s a term for this kind of status symbol, ever since Priuses came out and celebrities started getting dropped off by them on the red carpet: value signaling. But then moving back to Alaska, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little high and mighty having the first Tesla on the island. Proving to people not only that a Tesla could survive in southeast Alaska too, but that I was a local boy done good, triumphantly returning with a Tesla. Never mind that I was hemorrhaging money to make the car payments and rent a big house in the middle of town, while I stayed at home with our two young kids, a block from the school where Mariah worked and a block from a grocery store, with the Tesla plugged into an extension cord across the sidewalk while we went for weeks at a time without driving it and it started filling up with water and mold.
Electric cars now seem to me like self medication to deal with the cognitive dissonance of spending most of our time in monotonous, morally questionable jobs. Maybe it helps us smile through our commute. Maybe it will keep us wanting to go to the job for a few extra years. But the problem isn’t gas cars, the problem is jobs and lives that directly depend on cars of any kind. A few dozen trucks and vans could accomplish what the 3,000 people in my town truly need. What is every single person doing that is so important that it requires us to buckle into easy chairs inside tin cans and careen dozens or hundreds of miles a day? I’m reminded of comedian Mike Birbiglia complaining about a crying baby on a plane, saying, “That baby doesn’t need to be anywhere!”
And how much of our paycheck goes right back to the car that we supposedly need to get the paycheck? How much do we hang on to our car in case there’s an emergency, when it’s more than likely that the car will cause the emergency? The interstate highway system was built for fear war, to enable to quick military mobilization from one side of the country to the other, or vice versa, but it’s killed a lot more people than it’s saved so far. Yet modern cars are all an extension of that fear of attack and isolation and lack of freedom. As their lines get more rugged and militaristic, and include bio weapons defense mode, they also come with autopilot that could be hacked by Russia, or since Russia is our ally again, the U.S.S.A.. But even if our cars don’t get hacked, they are still part of a system of control, another weapon in the class war to keep the middle and lower classes down.
But the number one rule of Zombieland is cardio. Cars are a kind of virtual reality, where we forget what our own bodies are capable of, forget what weather feels like, forget the seasons with AC and AWD, forget how dependent we are on our gadgets. Forget where everything metal and plastic and electric in our lives comes from, forget who profits from it, forget what little we really need in money and other resources to survive, and have a good time doing it. If the things we own end up owning us, then the people who sell the things to us own us too. Maybe even more than the people who give us the money to buy the things.
I still think about Wendell Berry’s challenge to do what I can today. I ride a second-hand bike, sometimes towing my two kids, and it’s often the best part of my day. Second to writing, or running while my kids are asleep, it’s the only time that really feels like mine. Experiencing the rain and wind and weather by choice, aware of the noise and mass of the cars passing, rushing, in the name of comfort and safety, the line of cars at the drive-through coffee shop, glorified places to sit out of the rain and look at your phone while someone else makes your coffee. While my lungs hum with the cold air forced into them, sweat trickling down my back, and my legs burn cozily like I’m a little too close to a campfire.
I used to have the only Tesla on the island. Now I’m often the only person biking to town. This is partially an improvement of the thinking that made me buy the Tesla to begin with, and it is partially the financial consequence of buying the Tesla for $60,000 and selling it for $20,000 four years later. Either way, the Tesla is trash. The forks of a forklift have probably penetrated the falcon wing doors and the adjustable air suspension, but probably not the 75 kWh battery, or else it would have caught fire and the barge company would have called me sooner. None of these are problems that will ever happen with bikes. So don’t get a Tesla. Or any electric car. Or any car, if you can. Get a life where you don’t need that stuff.