Posted on 01/05/2022 3:54:10 PM PST by Hojczyk
Scott has already mentioned the 48-mile traffic backup that occurred in Northern Virginia yesterday. Reportedly, cars were stopped on I-95 for more than 24 hours in freezing temperatures.
It must have been awful, but it could have been worse. And, as Charles Lane explains, it would have been much worse if there had been many more electric vehicles (EVs) in the traffic jam.
Sometime after 3 a.m. Tuesday. . .a long-haul trucker from Canada heard a knock at the door of his cab. It was one of the hundreds of other motorists stuck in subfreezing temperatures with no food or water.
The supplicant was “driving a Tesla,” recounted the trucker, who told the story on Twitter under the handle My World Through A Windshield, “and he’s worried about running out of power in the cold. [It’s] 19°F or -7°C. He’s a nice guy who was worried about his kids. I gave him some water, a spare blanket and [a] thermal/mylar blanket.”
It’s a hassle in ordinary winter situations but potentially much worse than that on a night like Monday.
Any EV driver stuck on I-95 was right to be anxious — not only about a rapidly dying battery but also about recharging it. Cold would make that process much more time-consuming, assuming there was a charging station nearby, and that the electric power system hadn’t gone out (as it did in parts of Virginia on Monday).
The point is that when people invest their money in a vehicle, they expect to be able to count on it even in extraordinary conditions.
Mass adoption of EVs, and the hoped-for cut in greenhouse gas emissions, thus hinges on the availability of EVs that can do everything existing ICE models can, all the time,
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
He just need to mount a genny on his trunk lid with a spare can of gas.
Right now, owning an ev is kind of like owning a motorcycle....you don’t want it to be your sole transportation and you want to check the weather before leaving the house
And California’s power outages remind us of the folly of “green” energy. NOTHING mandated by the government work. NOTHING!
Not ready for prime time until there’s a lot more power built in the EV car. If it was way cheaper that would work, but its expensive comparably so it doesn’t.
Almost all long haul semis have very spacious sleepers with lots of amenities, up to and including showers. Assuming they had a decent amount of diesel fuel in their tanks they could have stayed there for days and lived in relative luxury. NP
just raise the built in wind turbine to recharge
“electric” cars won’t make sense until widespread deployment of fuel cells. Before that, they’re commuter vehicles.
When our car gits stuck in the snow, our big Morgans can pull em out. Then we just hook up the Cutter. Dont need no car.
TexasGator needs to be pinged to this thread since he’s an EV groupie........
I guess the real question is how could anyone be so STUPID as to drive an EV knowing a storm is approaching? And if they didn’t track weather conditions, then they’re not competent to even drive an IV in the first place.
“Almost all long haul semis have very spacious sleepers with lots of amenities, up to and including showers. Assuming they had a decent amount of diesel fuel in their tanks they could have stayed there for days and lived in relative luxury. NP”
I helped a guy change a tire on his rig in the arctic and he told me about being stranded for 15 days due to weather, in the winter (obviously it was summer when I was helping him). He didn’t seem too amazed by it, but rather mad that he wasn’t getting paid for that time.
The (non-electric) rigs can run forever as diesels SIP fuel when idling.
If it were a technology ready for the general public, it wouldn’t be so heavily subsidized.
“VIRGINIA TRAFFIC JAM PROVIDES REMINDER OF LIMITATIONS OF ELECTRIC CARS...”
...and Democrat state government.
EV driver was counting on the storm to furnish enough wind power. But wait, his car is not hooked up to charging station on the hi-way. May be he should have installed a wind turbine on roof of his EV.
Just wait for a Carrington Event.
I see fuel cell tech hitting the big time at the same time charging stations are finally fielded everywhere.
A couple of winters ago I was driving on a highway in Minnesota with the temperature around -17. Ahead I could see a vehicle struggling to maintain 45 mph. As I passed
could see it was a Chevy Volt. The small gasoline engine that runs a generator to keep the battery topped off was screaming trying to keep up. The windows were frosted over except a small area at the base of the windshield. I am certain the driver and passenger were freezing as there was not enough heat to keep the windows from frosting over. The vehicle had an Iowa license and was heading toward Iowa. I always wondered if they made it back or were frozen by the roadside.
I can’t stop laughing at that story. I can just picture that Volt perfectly! LOL!
If this happened today with all the EVs, we would had to use helicopters to evacuate drivers.
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