If you're fleeing a disaster in your EV you may soon end up on foot anyway. I'd hate to think what the grid demand would be if, say, New York or LA suddenly all headed to the hills in EVs simultaneously. Especially if that infrastructure is taking battle damage.
I guess you could say the same about fossil fuel cars and gas stations? I doubt that everyone keeps their tanks full at all times. And just imagine the amount of traffic on roads in such a situation, regardless of your preferred energy source. You'd be struggling to get anywhere at all, unless you're among the first few fleeing town.
Not to mention that EVs outmileage every other type of engine in a traffic jam. Also, power is much easier to get compared to fuel (with maybe the exception of fuel for old diesels that will run on everything - but this depends on circumstance). This is really a bad dig at EVs.
Only if your power grid is functioning, which I wouldn't expect to be the case in most major disaster situations. Otherwise you'll be stuck burning fuel in a generator to charge your car.
EDIT: the other great thing about liquid fuel is it doesn't weigh very much. Diesel is 7.1lb/gal so if your diesel car gets 32mpg (like mine does) you get 4.5mi/lb. With 1500lb on a trailer--let's say it only gets 20mpg or 2.8mi/lb towing--that's an extra 4200mi of range. That's enough to go from Boston to Anchorage without refueling. It's also a much more easily transferable energy source than electrons--all you need to do is pour liquid from one container into another. You don't need some fancy battery charger that needs stable power at such and such Volts, Watts, and Hz.. So, no, in a disaster or war situation I doubt the EVs will work at all.
When the grid wasn't functioning around me, pretty much every gas station didn't have working pumps. The extreme few which did heavily rationed fuel (I think only 4gal per customer?) and often ran out.
I have ~200gal of red diesel in a home heating oil tank for the shop that I could easily burn in my car, tractor (with PTO generator), or whatever. This is the versatility of liquid fuel--it's a fungible asset with a pretty good shelf life (basically infinite for diesel, with appropriate additives quite long for gasoline).
Another problem with going to the gas station is payment. No internet means no credit cards or whiz-bang apple wallet stuff.
Cool, let me put that in my gas-powered ICE car. Its so fungible.
And I mean practically every household has a 200gal tank of diesel in their apartment and suburban household. Only the oddballs wouldn't have it.
> tractor
Hmm, makes me think maybe most households aren't in the same situation here. Most households are going to be in the same situation if their car is an ICE versus an EV. Maybe ever so slightly better in the EV, because at least they're likely to already be charged to like 90% every night versus somewhere between nearly empty to full. In the end, if the grid stops working chances are they're going to have a hard time getting more gas until they get someplace where the grid is functioning.
That's a choice, definitely the more common one in the US, but not the only one. I've been driving diesel cars for my entire adult life--better part of a quarter century now.
Gasoline is by far the worst of the common fuels--diesel, gasoline, and propane. They make propane dinghy outboards for exactly this reason--carrying gasoline just for the dinghy really inconveniences a boat whereas they already have propane and diesel onboard for the engine and galley. Diesel and propane both have ~infinite shelf life.
> Hmm, makes me think maybe most households aren't in the same situation here.
Yes, I've prioritized access to nature and quiet over pretty much everything else. That's not normally what people who do computers for job do.
About driving diesel: They pollute much more. Can you comment on that?
> Diesel and propane both have ~infinite shelf life.
Google disagrees with the comment about diesel fuel. It looks like 6-12 months. Do you really think that generators attached to most large buildings never rotate their diesel fuel supply? I doubt it.
I don't know where Google is getting their information from, but I've personally started diesels I know haven't run in 20+yr on the first crank. There are three things that can fuck up a diesel:
1. Air leaks in the fuel system. If any of the negative pressure components have an air leak you'll be sucking air. This means less
fuel, but more crucially less lubrication. High pressure injection pumps are meant to be lubricated by fuel.
2. Algae. Sometimes a fuel system can be contaminated by extremophiles that grow in untreated fuel. This will merely clog filters, and in the absence of water or air leaks will cause only fuel starvation and no engine damage.
3. Water. Water will turn into a steam bubble in the vacuum of the suction stroke of the injector pump, and then on the subsequent compression stroke the bubble will cavitate--turn inside out--and blast the wall of the injection pump cylinder with an extremely concentrated high temperature jet. Doing this hundreds of times per second wreaks havoc on the poor engine.
So if your fuel is dry and clean you're good.
For the pollution question, my retort is "which kind?" I claim diesels create more NOx and soot for less
CO2. So, which is your priority?
>For the pollution question, my retort is "which kind?" I claim diesels create more NOx and soot for less CO2. So, which is your priority?
I'd say "it depends". In a dense city I see NOx and soot as being a higher priority. If you're out in the sticks, probably your contribution to global warming (CO2 et al) should be weighted more heavily.
There's a lot of variables there. How well sealed is your tank? Was there much air there? How humid?
Its definitely much shorter than a decade, but if stored really well more than a year is pretty doable. 2+ years can be a gamble though. And if it causes problems, it might cause some serious problems. Want to gamble on your generator during an emergency?
I've definitely had some gas sitting in a tank with stabilizer last a couple of years. I've definitely had gas sitting in a tank go bad in under a year.
Not many people know that red diesel is simply dyed and only so cops know if you are using it in your car (since it lacks vehicle taxes). Unfortunately, they couldn’t do the same with electrons, so we just pay higher tag fees.
It will take quite a long time to charge an EV on solar power (or off a portable generator). The power density is just very inefficient compared to the huge mass of the batteries.
You actually don’t need a power grid to generate electricity, just a water wheel or some solar panels. I’ve been to some off grid places in China that mostly use water wheels, crazy stuff. Many Alaskan communities aren’t connected by grid to the outside but have local hydro stations to supply all their needs, with maybe diesel as a back up. Hawaiian islands are similar, but with solar instead of hydro.
If the apocalypse comes, EVs will be running for a lot longer than ICEs.
> Only if your power grid is functioning, which I wouldn't expect to be the case in most major disaster situations. Otherwise you'll be stuck burning fuel in a generator to charge your car.
An AM capable emergency radio is a few bucks on Amazon, and they have a hand spin generator next to batteries and a 12V or other wide-range DC input to attach a regular wall wart or a tiny solar panel.
I agree. Also, many modern diesels, like Mercedes Blue-Tec, power down completely when they come to a complete stop, like in a traffic jam. (I don't like the idea, and I frankly find it a bit annoying, but Mercedes does make solid and reliable equipment.)
Liquid fuels are relatively light and easy and quick to transfer.
When we had no power for a week, I drove a couple hours away to a gas station, spent 15 minutes filling jerry cans, and came back with enough energy to power my entire house for a week.
Yeah, in a continental or global disaster, we’re quickly going to be unable to get our hands on gasoline without the drilling and refineries and distribution, etc and electricity would be much more available. In the much more frequent and likely regional disaster… I’d prefer to be stuck with gasoline right now.
I could definitely see a future where instead of a noisy generator I power my house off of my car for a week until the charge is getting low, supplemented by some solar, then drive a couple hours to where the electricity is working and spend a half hour charging it back up.
I just don’t think we’re quite there yet. A typical long range EV right now, after the power to get me there and back, would have about 25kWh of power I could use for other things. That would be three hours of driving to replace 3 hours of generator output.
I've actually lived through evacuations of a major metro area...twice.
Both times gasoline quickly became incredibly hard to come by. Electricity would have been a lot easier.
Also, there was massive amounts of traffic trying to leave. An idling car slowly creeping through a 100mi traffic jam still uses a good bit of gas. An EV uses very little energy slowly rolling in the same situation. Sure at normal speeds I would have easily had 300+mi in the gas cars, but my mileage in traffic was massively worse on the 14+ hour drive from Houston to San Antonio.
I have as well, in hurricane zones, but electricity was out for multiple weeks, but gasoline was still available (if quite expensive due to market forces, but of course that meant that there were still a few gallons available for everyone.)
And here come the headlines about gas shortages in Florida. Many hours of idling to go <100mi, stranding cars along the highway. Meanwhile, EVs still charging just fine.
First off, apparently gas pumps should have a flow rate around 8-10gpm. So 100 gallons is still only ten minutes of pumping.
But also... If you need 100 gallons to keep your house going for the week maybe, I don't know, try turning a couple (hundred) lights off or something for now?
Using 100 gallons over 7 days is 14.3 gallons per day. Assuming you can kill the generator while you're sleeping, figure 16 hours you have it running. So you're using 0.9 gallons per hour. Looking online, looks like for a gasoline generator ~6kWh/gallon is fairly typical.
So you're planning for, averaged out, a 5.5kWh draw continuously every hour you're awake.
If that's your typical power usage, you're looking at 5.51630.4 = 2,675kWh/mo, which at our electricity rates would cost me about $375 just in usage charges to buy from the grid (never mind the connection fees and stuff).
In reality we're using more like 4-6 gallons per day.
> How much fuel were you using to power your house for a week? I find it hard to believe you can pump more than 100 gallons of fuel in 15 mins.
Well, maybe you should have stopped after the question and we could have cleared up the confusion!
If I run the generator from morning to night with typical loads, I'm usually burning through about 5-6 gallons a day. So a week of fuel is 35-45 gallons.
Because I know "I actually did it" isn't a good answer, went and looked and the typical flow rate for a gas pump is supposed to be 8-10gpm. So... actual time holding the handle down on the pump, worst case, is about five and a half minutes.
> in a continental or global disaster, we’re quickly going to be unable to get our hands on gasoline without the drilling and refineries and distribution
Did you... disagree with that? Or are you just saying things to say things? Is there a big culture of backyard oil refining where you are? There isn't where I am. I didn't think I needed lived experience to say "if the refineries are shut down and the roads are impassible, oil products are going to be pretty hard to come by".
If your gas or diesel engine is old enough you could build yourself a wood/coal gasifier[1] and get yourself down the road. With a fairly simple regulator engines can be made to run well enough on natural gas, propane, maybe acetylene? Diesels will burn just about any liquid hydrocarbon, at least for a time before they succumb to injector pump damage or excessive carbon buildup.
EDIT: sure would love to know why y'all're downvoting... Is anything I wrote incorrect? Speaking from experience having crossed the US more than once burning various waste oils I'm pretty sure everything I wrote above is correct and factually accurate..
Because its massively impractical to think the average person is going to get the notice "you've got anywhere from an hour to an afternoon to evacuate" and be ready to convert their vehicle to goal gas and have plenty of wood/coal to actually get through the evacuation.
Yes, this is impossible. If having a vehicle connotes survival such people will perish. My point was only to illustrate there are many ways to make a piston engine go brr and only one way to make an EV mobile.
If you’re in the kind of Mad Max scenario where you are manually pumping gas, you might as well be hotwiring solar panels for your EV while you’re at it.
Except that ev “tanks” are full every morning. Besides, all cars are garbage when everyone uses them at once, until Texas finally builds their 200-lane freeway. Give me a bike with wide tires.
I own multiple vehicles, every single one of them is capable of going 1000km on a single tank of gas, and seeing as I live close to border with Russia I keep at least one of them (4x4 capable one) at full tank at all times.
What EV can do at least half of that?
EDIT: To add to AM radio in said car I also have CB Radio with detachable (magnetic) antenna, just in case.
That is true, but a gas or diesel vehicle can get refilled in 10 minutes, without consuming much power (a small generator is enough to run pumps at a gas station).
And there are 4x4 diesel trucks like Excursions and Suburbans that can carry 8 to 12 people in leather comfort for 700 miles, even over rough terrain (rough terrain shortens your range, just like anything.)
In a scenario where I need to drive many hundreds of miles to get to safety and there is no working infrastructure for charging an EV, I'd expect every gas station to run out of gas pretty darn quickly.
With gas vehicles it's trivial to keep extra fuel in portable containers, if the situation warrants it. That extra range could easily be the difference between getting out of a disaster zone or not.
Heck I'm hardly a prepper or living in a risky area but I have an extra fuel container in my garage simply because I sometimes drive through remote areas and having some extra fuel in the back is a worthwhile safety measure.
Disasters are known to happen at night. Cars can drive on terrain we just usually don't because it's seen as impolite. This isn't about transportation (or the width of your tires) it's about having a layer of security, some storage for more than what you can physically carry, a place to sleep off the ground, and shelter from the weather. Plus, you know, a radio.
Well, aside from the physical security aspect, sure. There are more than other people to be afraid of. Animals are severely annoying if you're out in the wilderness with something like food.
Gas stations were no better. The eclipse traveled over many remote areas that never see more than 10 cars/hr on their roads. Suddenly there were thousands all at once. We went to northern NH and the ride back to the NYC area was unreal, taking 11 hours. Thankfully we had the forethought to fill up the morning before the eclipse.
Ah yes good thing gas stations have an infinite supply of fuel ready to go that'll never need to be replenished in the face of unprecedented demand. Also we're very lucky that gasoline is such a stable material that it'll surely not cause problems in the event of "battle damage".
What is it about EVs that makes you people's brains turn off?
I agree with your point. I see this type of comment on HN frequently when EVs are discussed. There is a certain (very vocal) minority of people, that no matter how good is an EV, will only focus on the negatives. It is best to mostly ignore these types of comments, unless they are bringing new ideas to the discussion.
> no matter how good is an EV, will only focus on the negatives
What? I would love to be able to drive EVs. They just don't cut it for the uses I need a vehicle for. Multi-hour recharge times and the weight of batteries make it untenable. Hopefully some day we'll get there, but we're talking an order of magnitude in both the charge and mass dimensions.
you can fast charge a Ford lightning from 15-80% in 40 minutes. slow charging is for when you plug it in overnight. the infrastructure for that isn't everywhere yet, so ymmv (literally), but like gp said, focusing only on the negatives is gonna make you miss the positives.
Gasoline contains energy inertly and can be moved around in almost any container. Electricity almost always relies on a grid that requires uncommon knowledge to tap into. I took the parent comment to mean that LA or NY was in some sort of "zombie apocalypse" scenario in which it's hard to argue that EV's are better than gas.
You need to have battery bank, which many people don't do in places where there is net metering. I've put off installing batteries because currently the utility pays me for power. Unfortunately, this means when the power is out the grid disconnect flips and the solar power goes nowhere. I'll get batteries some day.
> Also we're very lucky that gasoline is such a stable material that it'll surely not cause problems in the event of "battle damage".
What? Are you saying gasoline burns? Congratulations you cracked the world's greatest mystery! Batteries burn real good too, you should try it sometime it's quite spectacular :D
EDIT: Seriously, though, taking out all the hydrocarbon fuels is a much, much more difficult proposition than taking out the power grid. The environmentalist in me wishes this wasn't true, but it is.
Disturbing the supply chain for both hydrocarbons and electricity is actually scarily easy and in most places those are closely linked anyway. But it really takes a tiny push and the whole system comes crumbling down. Especially if you have adversaries that know what they are doing. There is very little "offline" infrastructure.
It would be impossible to get fuel. This situation already plays out all the time the the US.
When hurricane Irene hit NYC, you couldn't get fuel in the area for a week. And once it started showing up again you had to wait in 2 hour lines even at 3 AM.
