[YesBox]

Every time I think about EVs, I become filled with dread thinking about what will happen if an area loses power for an extended period of time. I used to live in an area that had transformers blow from rain showers.

At least you could hook up a generator to pump gas at a gas station.

:/ Life's about trade offs.

Edit: Whoops.. Im not against EVs to be clear. But from a safety POV, having two different energy sources is safer than having one. Im not sure if you'll understand this if you haven't lived in a very snowy state.

[pveierland]

You could also flip that and talk about the risks of when your gasoline supply get shut down due to some event. With an EV stack you can generate your power locally and add resilience that way.

[edent]

That's why Vehicle to the Grid / Home is so exciting. Your multi-kWh car battery can power your home for several days.

https://carnewschina.com/2024/12/05/byd-struck-deal-with-jap...

[jerkstate]

my area lost power for about 3 days last week and I ran all of my house's critical systems from my EV. it was great - silent, unlike the old generator, and not counting the sunk cost of the car, extremely cheap. Cost maybe $5 in electricity to keep the furnace, refrigerator/freezer, and internet on for 3 days, contrasted with probably $50 in gasoline for a similar amount of time.

If the outage had been longer, I could have made a half-hour trip to an area that had working EV fast chargers and come back with another 5-6 days of power for the house.

[3eb7988a1663]

How expensive is the setup to tie in your vehicle into a house grid? Or can it be something as crude as running extension cables to plug into a powerstrip attached to the car?

[Aachen]

That sounds like the extreme version of "but I need a fuel car because I want to drive it to France once a year for holiday". Driving something around all year for a once-a-year event is silly, but this is just insane. In a good life, you don't need this fallback from grid power even once in your lifetime!

At least, not beyond the inconvenience that is having to stay at home like 1 unplanned day per several decades. That's still three and three quarters of a nine of uptime even if you'd get the recent Iberian peninsula event every 10 years, and assumes you emptied the battery coincidentally the day before the outage. If you're not an EMT or power plant technician, you're doing more harm than good by being the person who can drive to work during a power outage and find that you're the only one there and nothing works anyway

[rstuart4133]

> That sounds like the extreme version of "but I need a fuel car because I want to drive it to France once a year for holiday".

Having just made the 1,000km trip to the French Alps and back again in a Tesla Y, that's not a valid excuse any more. Back at home in Australia driving 2,200km from Mackay to Melbourne in a EV also a common enough holiday trip.

The 5,000km trip to Perth might be a stretch, but it's considered a major undertaking in a conventional car too. You are crossing some of the most remote places on the planet that has paved roads. The problem isn't charging. It's that you need to carry spares - like drinking water for emergencies, and spare tyres.

It's the tyres that would stop me from doing it in a Tesla Y. The Y doesn't have a place for a spare tyre, which is a disease that seems to afflict many modern cars of all types. It doesn't even come with a jack. Worse it needs special tyres that are hard(ish) to find in a major city, let alone 1000km from anywhere.

Unless grandma lives in a place without electricity, the one issue you won't have in Australia or Europe is charging. EV charging points are everywhere now. Most parking lots have them. I dunno what the situation is in the USA, but if EV charging points are a problem I'd suspect deliberate government interference because in Australia at least every one seems to have been built privately. Unlike Europe Australia does not have much in the way of EV subsidies, yet they are springing up like weeds.

I suspect the reason is location, location, location. Similar to petrol stations, but unlike a petrol station the upfront investment is low, they aren't manned so no wage costs, in a shopping centre they attract customers and they seem to markup the cost by 80..150%. What's not to like? So get in early and get the best spots.

[3eb7988a1663]

Considering how expensive cars are, I do find the trip-to-grandma reasoning useful. Most people want a single vehicle that can do everything. Dismissing that with, "Well just drive differently" or "You can do the hassle that is renting a car" is not a compelling sell. What if I want to do my vacation trips during the holidays where rentals are already booked?

I think full EVs are great if the lifestyle allows it, but plug-in hybrids seem a better fit for most people without requiring undue compromise.

[rootusrootus]

We’ve already had some experiences with this in Florida after a hurricane. EVs do quite well, turns out, better in many cases than gas cars. The grid is a very high priority for fixing, more so even than gas supplies.

[quasse]

> Every time I think about EVs, I become filled with dread thinking about what will happen if an area loses power for an extended period of time

A mid-size EV battery can easily store 60kWh of energy. That's enough to power a domestic refrigerator for ~12 days (assuming 200w average power usage, which is on the higher end).

I lost power for about a day last year and was very happy to be able to keep my fridge and some emergency lighting powered from an EV battery.

[danaris]

Rooftop solar is getting cheaper, easier, more efficient, and more reliable every year.

If you live in an area that is poor enough that this is not an option, it loses power frequently due to weather, and no one in power cares enough to fix it, that genuinely sucks, and I feel for you. But, as sibling comments said, some other poor areas don't get gasoline shipments in a timely manner—being poor and neglected is just always going to suck in various ways, and the solution is not to avoid any technological advancements that remove the crutch that your particular poor and neglected area is using to get through it a little easier, but to find ways to reduce the poverty and neglect.

And, frankly, solar power and electric vehicles are both great tools to help with that, especially when used together.

[eldaisfish]

More batteries.

I cannot believe this is a serious question.

A small battery pack can easily run most essential domestic services.

[hypeatei]

The common advice among "preppers" and more anxious individuals is to never let your gas gauge go below half or 1/4 tank. I think people are much more anxious than they realize about running out of gas in a black swan event.

[eurleif]

When a hurricane impacted my area last year, I kept seeing Facebook posts for a week or two afterward from people asking where to find gas. Meanwhile, the power never went out, so my EV was able to charge without issue.

[beej71]

I worry about that, too, but with my gas car. :)