U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Security Details Drives A Ford

While many Tesla fans aren’t happy with the Biden Administration right now, it’s important to look for the good and congratulate it. Today, we’re seeing U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg walk the walk instead of just talking the talk like most politicians do.

The @ford Mach-E is @SecretaryPete brand new security detail car pic.twitter.com/AOjnrw3pqp

— davidshepardson (@davidshepardson) October 20, 2021

A security detail is something that’s meant to be mostly unnoticed. Yes, you want the bad guys who would hurt the protectee to know there’s a security detail, but you don’t want them to know all of the details and give the smarter of the baddies any opportunity to exploit holes in security. So, many security measures taken to protect VIPs are low-key and understated.

As much as we’d like to think otherwise, even the most guarded people in the world aren’t perfectly protected. When George W. Bush came to my town in 2004, I had a friend who wore a nametag, carried a clipboard, and had a cheap (but big) walkie talkie on his belt. He worked for the venue in question, and wasn’t trying to sneak into a secure area, but ended up literally bumping into the President of the United States without having gone through any kind of security check. He was, of course, bombarded with questions after this happened, but if he had been a person with bad intentions, the harm would have already been done. No amount of questions or after-the-fact scrutiny constitutes an “undo” button with things like that.

Given all this need for secrecy in the security of public officials, it would be pretty easy to just give them a cheaper car that’s easier to travel with. Nobody is going to make a big deal if Pete Buttigieg’s security detail drives a gas-powered car or even a large SUV. They might not even know it’s his security detail, or think there was a good excuse for it.

In other words, Secretary Buttigieg didn’t have to get his entourage to drive cleaner vehicles if he was a cynical politician who just talks the talk about the climate emergency. Nobody would have said a thing about keeping his security detail strictly gas-powered. He did this not because it would look good to others or elevate his green credibility, but because it was the right thing to do.

So, this does show where his real beliefs lie.

Biden’s Electric Federal Fleet Plan

Beyond showing one’s true beliefs, it also shows that the administration is following through on plans to make the federal fleet electric. Once again, there’s every available excuse for something like a security team to drive something gas-powered. They have to travel to different events, and the CCS charging network is woefully insufficient in many areas of the country that Secretary Buttigieg may travel to, for example.

Despite the availability of excuses, they are actually following through on buying EVs for federal use. We don’t know what they’ll do when Secretary Buttigieg needs to go somewhere the Mach-E isn’t easy to drive to (Montana, The Dakotas, parts of the Western United States). Perhaps they’ll use a different car for those rare trips, or they’ll have an…