SEATTLE — Local man Chris Johnston shocked the urbanist internet this week when he revealed that his Tesla Model Y, fully loaded with three consenting friends, uses less energy per passenger mile than the light rail train — instantly shattering 50 years of city-planner smugness.
“I just wanted to go to the baseball game,” Johnston said, still clutching his Purdue engineering degree like a mic drop. “But apparently I accidentally overthrew the entire pro-transit narrative while calculating watt-hours on a napkin.”
Reddit quickly turned into a scene from Gladiator, with environmentalists chanting “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?” as data nerds hurled kWh charts, lifecycle analyses, and memes of crying train conductors.
🚙 EV Drivers: Planet’s Last Hope
Experts confirm Johnston’s findings mean that a single suburban dad with a Tesla can now be classified as a “small but mighty micro-transit agency,” so long as he picks up at least three passengers and agrees to drop them off at the park-and-ride afterward.
“It’s basically Amtrak,” said one commenter, “except it smells like Clorox wipes, plays Joe Rogan, and stops at Target on the way home.”
🚊 Transit Advocates Furious
Pro-train activists fired back, arguing that Johnston’s math fails to account for vibes per passenger mile — an area where light rail still leads the industry.
“Sure, your car is efficient,” said one city planner, “but does it give you the thrill of being stared at by a man eating hard-boiled eggs at 7:15 AM? Does it let you witness an entire impromptu freestyle rap battle between stops?”
🏟️ Stadiums Join the Fight
Stadium operators, sensing profit, have sided with the EV camp by installing hundreds of new chargers and adding “Charged-Up Tailgate Zones,” where fans can grill brats directly off their V2L ports.
“Nothing says sustainability like running a George Foreman grill off a Hyundai Ioniq,” said one excited sports-marketing exec.
🚦 Coming Soon: HOV Enforcement by Tesla
In related news, Elon Musk announced that Teslas will soon snitch on solo drivers in HOV lanes by automatically tweeting dashcam footage of them. Musk called it “a major step toward full autonomy and full shame compliance.”