Imagine a robot. You’re probably envisioning a futuristic, humanoid figure in a high-tech lab or a home designed for 2050. But you’re actually most likely to see a robot somewhere in the forgotten manufacturing towns of the Midwest, being supervised and utilized by everyday, blue-collar workers in car factories or food processing plants.
I remember when electric vehicles first began colonizing the gas stations along Interstate 5, the long, open California highway that stretches from the verdant...
