EV Dies In The Desert, Leaves Hollywood Star Stranded

A nightmare scenario for electric vehicle owners happened to one Hollywood star who recounted how a faulty battery left him stranded along a desert highway outside Los Angeles.

Marc Malkin, the E! host and staple of entertainment news coverage, saw his EV horror story covered by Page Six which quoted sources describing how his new vehicle died on January 5th as he was returning to L.A. from the Palm Springs Film Festival.

The story goes that Oscar winner Sean Penn saved Malkin from an early desert grave after his EV unexpectedly ran out of juice. Malkin called a tow truck which pulled him to a charging port in Cabazon where Penn and his publicist Mara Buxbaum were charging their own ride.

“Marc looked to one side, and Sean Penn was charging his car – and he looked to his other side and saw Mara Buxbaum (Penn’s longtime publicist) charging her car.”

“All of a sudden, they saw a little flatbed tow truck with a car on it. They all forgot to charge overnight,” the source added.

After his EV struggled to hold a charge, Malkin called the leadership that sold him the car. He was told that the vehicle was struggling because he let the battery drain all the way to empty. In a bout of quick thinking, Malkin tried a different type of charger nearby and benefited from a push by Penn and Buxbaum to get him there.

“Mara came up to him and asked if he needed his car pushed,” said a source. “She said, ‘You need someone to push your car?’”

Before he knew it, “Penn was back there pushing his car.”

“It was the funniest thing ever,” a source added. “Sean was a real-life hero.”

While the trio made it back in time to hit the Golden Globes pre-ceremony party circuit, they might not have been as fortunate in other parts of the country lacking EV charging infrastructure. More than 3,000 auto dealers recently penned an open letter to President Joe Biden begging him to slow down with government demands on EV sales, blaming in part the dearth of chargers around the country.

The situation hit close to home for the Biden administration when one of its top energy officials found herself fighting a family of American citizens for charging ports in the middle of a cross-country tour encouraging consumers to consider EVs.