I read last week with some amusement the alarmist op-ed warning about electric cars written by Republican Rep. Holly Cheeseman of East Lyme, since I had scheduled delivery of my new Tesla for this week.

Among the dangers Cheeseman warned of was electrocution. Electrocution? Wow? Really?

Maybe I missed it, but I have not been able to find, in multiple Google searches, a single story about someone being electrocuted by their electric car.

Railing against Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed adoption of California environmental car regulations, which would eliminate the sale of new gas cars here by 2035, Cheeseman also fretted about how a business with 100 employees might have to install 100 electric chargers, so they could all make it home.

Gee, does she think employers now have one gas pump for every employee? Does she not know that most EVs now already get close to 300 miles or more on a single charge?

And does she really not understand that there will still be gas cars, as well as a resale market for them, and lots of remaining gas stations, by the time manufacturers finish their own imminent conversions to selling only electric vehicles, whether states mandate that or not?

You probably won’t be able to buy a new gas car in any state after 2040, and whatever infrastructure planning Connecticut needs for that, we ought to be on it now. Clearly the gas tax isn’t going keep fixing our roads in the age of EVs.

Automakers are already building and sponsoring substantial and growing networks of charging stations. It’s capitalism at work.

The representative from East Lyme also apparently does not understand that EV prices are falling as fast as Connecticut Republican poll numbers in the Trump era, with some Tesla prices down nearly 25 percent just this year. More cuts are predicted.

With federal and state tax credits, you can buy a new Tesla for about the price of a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry. It’s made in America and it is going to cost a lot less money to operate and maintain in the years to come.

I had to drive more than two hours, to Westchester County in New York, to pick up my Tesla because Connecticut Republicans and Democrats have refused to let the publicly-traded manufacturing behemoth sell its cars directly to customers here, protecting the wealthy, lobbyist-rich car dealership owners.

The day I was there, they were delivering cars at the suburban New York Tesla store like cones at Mystic Drawbridge Ice Cream on a hot Sunday in August. They told me they usually deliver about 30 cars on weekdays and 60 on weekend days.

There were lots of employees, on both the sales and service sides, and presumably local taxes paid on that enormous inventory of cars.

The Tesla Model Y is the now the biggest selling car in the world. They are fairly priced and cheap to own. But you can’t buy one in Connecticut.

Cheeseman’s op-ed piece was a rehash of what she said at a recent press event by Republican lawmakers, who, in their whining about Lamont’s clean air objectives, sounded a lot like buggy whip lobbyists might have, at the dawn of the car age.

I don’t think the Connecticut Republicans are pandering to the oil lobby in opposing EV mandates as much as they are looking for new fringe issues with which to assail Democrats.

You can only scare a voter so much by predicting a transgendered person is going to sexually assault their daughter in a McDonald’s bathroom. It’s time to frighten them with EV electrocution.

I was so bent on refuting Cheeseman’s alarmist attack on electric cars that I decided to name my new Tesla after her.

If you see us say hello to Holly. But I warn you we’ll be hard to find because there are soon going to be so many Teslas in your grocery store parking lot, all sold out of state, including the ones soon to be delivered on the sovereign and independent lands of the Mohegan Indians.

This is the opinion of David Collins

d.collins@theday.com