[patryn20]

Seriously. Just give me a NORMAL car with a modern electric drivetrain and I’ll be happy. I have my 4Runner for longer trips and “electric grid down because Texas is a 3rd world island in a 1st world country” situations.

These electric cars are going for full gimmickry and just look like a giant long term ownership nightmare. Built to be disposable status symbols for your average American trying to appear wealthier than they are instead of practical vehicles for the mass market.

[everdrive]

If you can get a very base model Nissan Leaf, they're pretty basic. Bonus points if it's a bit older. Ours is extremely old fashioned, and except for the sound when driving is basically indistinguishable from a mid-2010s Honda Fit.

[checkyoursudo]

My 2012 Leaf is amazing. It has sadly lost a lot of battery capacity, and I think there is something funny going on with the brakes, but it is still a great car. Just can't go very far anymore. But I only drive it around my small town anyway, so it doesn't need to go very far.

[epistasis]

One minor comment, but if the electric grid is down, then it's likely you won't be able to pump gas either. At least, most gas stations have not planned to be functional without electricity.

[patryn20]

Yeah. But I can still fill an ICE car manually with a can or hand pump.

Also hurricane evacuation with mass electric adoption is going to be an interesting situation to observe. It may be better than with an ICE. We’ll see.

[aftbit]

I believe you but this never made sense to me. A random internet search shows that there are on the order of 100k gas stations in the USA. It seems like FEMA could come up with on the order of $20M to buy generators for all of them and make them come up with a plan to operate without electric power.

Although maybe it costs more than I think? This "industry lobbyist"[1] claims $40k PER PUMP which seems much more expensive than the ~$2000/station I was estimating.

1: https://www.cnbc.com/id/49667864

[LtWorf]

Normally a manual pump is present.

[jjav]

In (most?) areas which typically experience longer outages (e.g. due to hurricanes) gas stations have their own generators to keep operating.

[agloe_dreams]

You want a Chevy Bolt.