A patient in Austin, Texas, apparently just couldn't wait for their scheduled vasectomy—the procedure that disconnects a man's babymaking tubes from his, ahem, member—after a power outage impacted his urologist's office. But without power, the minimally invasive outpatient procedure nonetheless wasn't looking doable. Except there was a Rivian R1T electric pickup truck nearby, and the following tweet from Dr. Chris Yang:
"I performed what is likely the world's first powered vasectomy today. Power in clinic went out, patient didn't want to reschedule cause he already had time off. Electrocautery was normal, procedure went great!"
It seems the truck belongs to Dr. Yang, and though it wasn't clear from the tweet whether he or the impatient patent cut to the chase and suggested using it as a de-facto power source for medical equipment, the end result is, so Yang claims, that the patient received full treatment. Reached for comment, the doctor says he was for canceling the procedure when a member of his staff "jokingly mentioned that [they] should run the electrocautery off of the truck." After some more serious discussion with the patient and ensuring non-powered backups were handy, the show went on.
We aren't doctors, so we can't tell you how much equipment, exactly, a vasectomy requires, but in Dr. Yang's photo evidence posted to twitter, we can see a yellow extension cord running from his Rivian R1T pickup's bed (where there are two 120-volt outlets for powering household electronics and small appliances) and through the "employees only" door at North Austin Urology. Each of those bed outlets can provide 1,500 watts, which doesn't seem like much for, well, medical equipment.
But per Dr. Yang, it seems the patient—who didn't feel like taking a different day off for the procedure and was game for trying something new—got snipped, and the electrocautery equipment and a small fan—the only devices needed—worked just fine. A quick googling of that phrase and "vasectomy" reveals that the tool, an electric cauterizer, is used at the end of the procedure, after the man's reproductive highway is split, to seal things off. Further googling resulted in this author's legs crossing a little and revealed that many such surgical cauterizing tools, including the device Dr. Yang confirmed to MotorTrend that he uses, run at 400 watts—meaning the Rivian's bed outlets easily powers them. The more you know!
A quick browsing of the comments on his tweet reveal MotorTrend is not the only national news outlet slicing into this story. We are, however, the one outlet that named this vasectomy-on-wheels our 2022 Truck of the Year. We loved its power-generation capabilities, but, you know, figured they'd be deployed to power camping equipment or maybe someone's fridge when the power went out. A vasectomy? That's one use case we didn't think of, so, kudos Dr. Yang.
From an automotive and cultural perspective, however, if anyone was worried about electric pickup trucks figuratively sapping America's testosterone levels, well, this story's straying into the literal is probably your worst nightmare. On the other hand, Rivian's truck isn't the only new vehicle capable of delivering such power, nor is it the only electric vehicle to do so. Heck, several traditionally powered vehicles with onboard power outlets, namely Ford's F-150 PowerBoost Hybrid, could have made the cut. After all, the then-new F-150 Hybrid broke out as a power savior during Texas power outages in 2021. As far as we know, no vasectomies were Built Ford Tough during that episode, however.
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