Fox News programs cherry-picked from a segment on NBC’s Today show about electric vehicles to falsely claim that “you can’t drive them when it's hot.”

“You can only drive Teslas or electric vehicles on September 1 between 9 and 5,” co-host Emily Compagno claimed on the June 21 edition of Outnumbered. “Get out of here. There's no reliability. And in fact, they’re dangerous.”

Other guests also piled on to argue that EVs are unreliable in extreme heat and cold.

In the evening, a chyron on The Five warned that “EVs could trap and cook you to death” while the show’s hosts suggested that electric cars are unreliable overall. Co-host Katie Pavlich concluded, “I think this proves that Joe Biden is trying to kill us all by trapping us in these electric vehicles.”

In fact, the Today segment did raise concerns about electric vehicles — not that they don’t run in the heat, but rather that there are “a growing number of reports of people being unable to get in or out of their car” when the “battery for on-board electronics” such as door locks and windows, not the battery that powers the car’s electric motors, dies. (The battery loss is seemingly not related to the heat.)

According to one study, electric vehicles may lose some of their range when temperatures get into the triple digits, though it noted that “EVs may have an advantage over internal-combustion cars when driving in hot weather with the air conditioning blasting” explaining, “That's because EVs don't have a heat-producing engine that the air conditioning has to fight against to lower temperatures.” The same EV researcher also found that “weather extremes can also lead to more battery degradation, but ... it's not likely to brick your EV.” However, Today did not comment on range issues associated with extreme heat, instead focusing on stories from people who had trouble getting in or out of their vehicles when the on-board electronics stopped working. 

Notably, Outnumbered left out the common sense solution offered by the Today segment all together, while The Five mentioned it briefly: 

The Today segment also covered education for first responders who might need to get into a locked electric vehicle. Using the example of one firefighter who is taking up that cause of educating his peers, the segment pointed out “since every electric car is slightly different, he says firefighters often end up breaking windows or tearing open doors to save those inside,” adding that “he believes this is not an issue with the vehicles but more so car education that absolutely needs to be addressed here.”

Extreme heat is dangerous no matter what you drive if safety precautions are not heeded. Sadly, 38 children on average die in hot cars each year. According to CBS News, “Over the last three decades, more than 1,000 children have died in these incidents.”

We now live in a world where we have to both mitigate worsening climate impacts and adapt to the ones we are already experiencing. In this case, that means implementing solutions to mitigate climate pollution, like transitioning to EVs, while also following safety guidance during extreme heat events no matter what we may be driving.