Posted on 01/21/2022 1:10:37 PM PST by DUMBGRUNT
BY ALEX LAUER @ALEXLAUER After a winter storm left hundreds of motorists stranded on Interstate 95 in Virginia earlier this month, many for over 24 hours, we were left with plenty of questions. What went wrong on a governmental level that led to this? How could similar traffic shutdowns be avoided in the future? What should we be carrying in our cars in case of an emergency like this?
The most perplexing question of the bunch was a hypothetical one: what would have happened if all of these cars — stuck on icy roads in the snow in temperatures that dropped down to the teens — were electric? Well, it was posed as a hypothetical question, but most of the people who asked it perceived it as a rhetorical one; the implication was that if I-95 was full of EVs, the outcome would have been a catastrophe of dead batteries, stalled vehicles and frozen occupants.
It’s easy to make an argument against electric cars in extreme cases like these, partially because the technology is so new and thus easily misunderstood, and partially because, as we have previously discussed, EVs do indeed fare worse in freezing temperatures than in warmer weather (as do internal combustion engine cars). But to see whether there was an argument to be made in defense of our supposed electrified future, I did something a little more difficult: I idled in an electric car for 12 hours to see what would happen.
(Excerpt) Read more at insidehook.com ...
It’s all fun and games until you popsicle out...
Rule #1: Mother Nature is vastly more powerful than any government and all its assets.
Rule #2: See Rule #1. You need to plan to be on your own.
I know a lot of freepers won’t like this..
Just about all of the problems an EV have are outside the car.
The generation of power to the charger, increased emissions and supply issues at the generation and driving around on an electrical hazard.
I drive gas powered because I can afford the actual car, I like to shift gears and I like the sound. I also like to modify it.
If you get an EV all of those are gone. That said they are simpler, faster and frankly nicer.
Tesla is a trusted company because they test their firmware, and build in safety software if there is an error. I wouldn’t trust a company like, say, Microsoft or Ford to do the same.
I admit I expected these things to have endless issues.. but I was wrong. EV is a good option.
“When I got in the car to start the test at 5:45 a.m., the charge read 100% but only 186 miles of range on the instrument cluster.”
I double that many e-vehicles caught in the I-95 traffic were at 100%. Also, 186 miles seems borderline for interstate traffic.
Lithium mining is going to be the dagger in the heart of moving to an all e-vehicle future - for both availability and environmental reasons. Throw in Cobalt mining for a twist of the dagger.
here’s a more realistic scenario, not just ONE EV but thousands:
well the scenario with chain-reaction dead EVs is that several thousand EVs take off to evade a disaster at the same time, but many don’t have a full charge and so those give out first, causing the whole gaggle to stall, with the next poorest charged ones giving up the ghost next, and so on until there’d be miles of dead EVs stalled essentially forever, as there’d be no way to perform a mass charge or a mass tow ... especially if all of the emergency vehicles themselves were EVs ... and even if bunches of them did manage to get some distance away, there’s be no way at whatever destination they did mange to reach to recharge that many all at once ...
and that scenario would still get worse: operators in CA are already talking about limiting EV charging to night-time when demand is otherwise lower ... can just see the scenario when grid operators put automatic switches on home charging stations that don’t turn the juice on until a certain time in the evening, and the disaster hits right before or about that time and almost NO EVs are fully charged, and perhaps most are even nearly empty ... and of course there’s the scenario when the grid itself is wiped out early in the disaster ...
Ethanol
It would still be good for about 18 hours before dying. In other words, a quality electric car holds up about as well for as long as an ICE car which has to run the engine continually to heat the cabin.
Starter motors and alternators and engine oil and coolant are a bother at very low temperatures, but then so are batteries.
That was one question posed by the writer == what kind of stuff to include in your car just in case.
Two things for sure: a full gallon jug of drinking water and an empty water jug to urinate into. Women have to be slightly more resourceful about using that 2nd jug, I would think.
Yes, he could have heated his cabin for well over 40 hours and still have driven away when trafffic cleared. Even if he had only 1/2 range when he hit the traffic jam, he could have driven away after 20-24 hours sitting still and heating the cabin. I think that is very impressive.
Batteries dont use charge in a linear fashion. I wouldnt bet on it.
You cannot recharge it very easily, that is the real problem.
I think we need some new taxes levied, and serious fines and penalties for non-compliance too.
It’s the right thing to do.
The people cheering on EV's are backing all of us into a corner. Ya put 80 million EV's on the roads and you can bet the rent, electricity rates will skyrocket, there will be electricity rationing and regulations on when or where you can charge, drive, etc, etc.
You wrote that tongue-in-cheek, but it is sound advice to use the parts of the car to survive a blizzard.
When I was 12 years old, I read an article in Popular Science magazine (February 1963, page 88) that explained how to use your car to stay warm and survive cold. It's still good advice. I did a lot of work in very high altitude places and mountains ten years later and always kept the article's tips and suggestions in mind.
Here is the original article I read so long ago: How to Survive a Blizzard Using Your Car and Your Head.
Of course, you will probably have to find something else to hold the gasoline for your signal fire because "hub caps" are rare as hen's teeth these days. And you no longer disconnect the fuel line from the carburetor. But you get the idea.
Popular Science did a number of survival articles. Here's another with good tips from August 1966: How to Survive...Anywhere.
Actually, the car still had a 75% charge, if you read the article. So if you were at half charge, you’d still have about 25% charge.
can you idle in it for 2 weeks after a hurricane strikes?...
That’s true. If you turn the car off at 20 or 30 below zero and the oil turns to gel, you may not get it started again.
Makes sense that the battery would last a long time when not being driven, other than those short times the person wrote about. It would be interesting to keep records of traveling the same specific route in very cold weather, balmy weather, and very warm weather. It would take some searching to find such a place, but they exist.
The tale of acceptance of EVs will be told by watching the percentage of EV owners who buy an EV again when they trade. I recently read the current figure is 80% buy another EV.
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