One man said: “We got a bunch of dead robots out here.”

A charging station in Skokie has 20 charging stations. People lined up to charge their cars.

Some ran out of power while waiting. The freeze also contributed to the batteries losing their juice …

I get alerts on my phone about my security cameras in the cold weather. “Extreme cold weather can lead to battery drain.”

[This is a known problem for traditional cars too, at least with somewhat older batteries. When I drove stick-shifts, I could get the car started by pushing it and popping the clutch, but that trick doesn’t work on automatic transmissions, and won’t do anything for EVs. EVs are not practical in sustained cold-weather conditions, and the time it takes to recharge a cold battery makes that even worse. A lot of EV owners will learn that the hard way in this polar vortex. — Ed]