Will Hurricanes Prompt More Purchases of Electric Cars? (msn.com) 166
Days after a hurricane struck America's southeast, Florida's state's fire marshall "confirmed 16 lithium-ion battery fires related to storm surge," according to local news reports. "Officials said six of those fires are associated with electric vehicles and they are working with fire departments statewide to gather more data." (Earlier this year America's federal transportation safety agency estimated that after a 2022 hurricane "about 36 EVs caught on fire. In several instances, the fire erupted while the impacted EVs were being towed on their flatbed trailers.")
But Tuesday, when over 1 million Americans were without electricity, the Atlantic pointed out the other side of the story. "EV owners are using their cars to keep the lights on." When Hurricane Helene knocked out the power in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Friday, Dustin Baker, like many other people across the Southeast, turned to a backup power source. His just happened to be an electric pickup truck. Over the weekend, Baker ran extension cords from the back of his Ford F-150 Lightning, using the truck's battery to keep his refrigerator and freezer running. It worked so well that Baker became an energy Good Samaritan. "I ran another extension cord to my neighbor so they could run two refrigerators they have," he told me.
Americans in hurricane territory have long kept diesel-powered generators as a way of life, but electric cars are a leap forward. An EV, at its most fundamental level, is just a big battery on wheels that can be used to power anything, not only the car itself. Some EVs pack enough juice to power a whole home for several days, or a few appliances for even longer. In the aftermath of Helene, as millions of Americans were left without power, many EV owners did just that. A vet clinic that had lost power used an electric F-150 to keep its medicines cold and continue seeing patients during the blackout. One Tesla Cybertruck owner used his car to power his home after his entire neighborhood lost power.
One Louisiana man just ran cords straight from the outlets in the bed of his Tesla Cybertruck, according to the article. "We were able to run my internet router and TV, [plus] lamps, refrigerator, a window AC unit, and fans, as well as several phone, watch, and laptop chargers." Over the course of about 24 hours, he said, all of this activity ran his Cybertruck battery down from 99 percent to 80 percent...
Bidirectional charging may prove to be the secret weapon that sells electrification to the South, which has generally remained far behind the West and the Northeast in electric-vehicle purchases. If EVs become widely seen as the best option for blackouts, they could entice not just the climate conscious but also the suburban dads in hurricane country with a core belief in prepping for anything. It will take a lot to overcome the widespread distrust of EVs and anxiety about a new technology, but our loathing of power outages just might do the trick.
The article notes that Tesla has confirmed all its electric vehicles will support bidirectional charging by 2025.
But Tuesday, when over 1 million Americans were without electricity, the Atlantic pointed out the other side of the story. "EV owners are using their cars to keep the lights on." When Hurricane Helene knocked out the power in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Friday, Dustin Baker, like many other people across the Southeast, turned to a backup power source. His just happened to be an electric pickup truck. Over the weekend, Baker ran extension cords from the back of his Ford F-150 Lightning, using the truck's battery to keep his refrigerator and freezer running. It worked so well that Baker became an energy Good Samaritan. "I ran another extension cord to my neighbor so they could run two refrigerators they have," he told me.
Americans in hurricane territory have long kept diesel-powered generators as a way of life, but electric cars are a leap forward. An EV, at its most fundamental level, is just a big battery on wheels that can be used to power anything, not only the car itself. Some EVs pack enough juice to power a whole home for several days, or a few appliances for even longer. In the aftermath of Helene, as millions of Americans were left without power, many EV owners did just that. A vet clinic that had lost power used an electric F-150 to keep its medicines cold and continue seeing patients during the blackout. One Tesla Cybertruck owner used his car to power his home after his entire neighborhood lost power.
One Louisiana man just ran cords straight from the outlets in the bed of his Tesla Cybertruck, according to the article. "We were able to run my internet router and TV, [plus] lamps, refrigerator, a window AC unit, and fans, as well as several phone, watch, and laptop chargers." Over the course of about 24 hours, he said, all of this activity ran his Cybertruck battery down from 99 percent to 80 percent...
Bidirectional charging may prove to be the secret weapon that sells electrification to the South, which has generally remained far behind the West and the Northeast in electric-vehicle purchases. If EVs become widely seen as the best option for blackouts, they could entice not just the climate conscious but also the suburban dads in hurricane country with a core belief in prepping for anything. It will take a lot to overcome the widespread distrust of EVs and anxiety about a new technology, but our loathing of power outages just might do the trick.
The article notes that Tesla has confirmed all its electric vehicles will support bidirectional charging by 2025.
Or less? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Or less? (Score:4, Funny)
All part of a plot by democrats. Did you know they can control the weather now? https://www.newsweek.com/marjo... [newsweek.com]
Re:Or less? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hows about we hijack this back to say that it's stuff like this that shows how places that manage to keep their governments functional and under control of the people that succeed and places that just treat it as if government failure is expected that end up failing.
If EVs are this useful then we need ways to have more of them more safely. If there's a risk from fires then we need to have spaces to put them where the fire doesn't cause a big problem to the building it's next to. The risk of a fire is low enough that you can't expect normal people to experience it and be able to plan for it. It's common enough, though, that having a government level plan for dealing with it and making sure that charging points are positioned outside where a car can be put safely really helps.
I know a guy who's entire apartment building was saved because his builder insisted on putting in fireproof plasterboard that normally nobody bothers with.
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Whether an EV or a gasoline-powered vehicle, cars are a fire hazard.
More to the point, energy storage is, by its very nature, a fire hazard, whether it is in the form of a battery, gasoline, hydrogen, molten salt, or very nearly any other form, with the exception of kinetic storage (flywheels), compressed air storage, or gravitic storage (pumped storage), and those are an explosion/fragmentation risk (for the first two) and a flooding risk, respectively.
In spite of that, though, in a typical year, only about 25 EVs catch fire per 100k vehicles sold, versus 1,530 gasoline-po
Re:Or less? (Score:4, Informative)
If you live in a flood zone, you prep for living in a flood zone.
Spoiler: Very few people prep for living in a flood zone when they live in a flood zone. Instead, they think it'll never affect them and hope for government relief when it does.
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>> thousands of feet above sea level
Anywhere near most rivers and lakes makes for a flood zone. Asheville for example. Most inland cities are formed around a river or next to a lake.
Re:Or less? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and anywhere with significant risk there are flood maps based on local geography available if you care to look for them.
They'll tell you how often you should expect flooding and how deep it'll get. There are a couple of places in Canada that seem to flood every other year, and we keep sending in the military to help with sandbags and I keep shaking my head.
You live on the lower bank of a river that floods all the time, build your homes on stilts or put nothing worth anything on the ground floor and build everything to be easily cleaned after flooding. Concrete, tile, and no electrical outlets below the flood line. Sewer cut offs. Maybe a small rowboat or canoe kept in the backyard in case the flooding is prolonged and you have to leave for some reason. And definitely, positively, have a garage that is waterproof up to the flood line if you want your car to survive (and in the case of an EV, not burn down the parts of your home that aren't flooding).
If you're not doing that, you're definitely going to get my resentment over my tax dollars helping your dumb ass out every time there's a major rainfall upstream.
FEMA maps don't account for extreme rainfall (Score:3)
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And when we do find people preparing for them, society degrades them and makes fun of the “preppers”.
They're not preparing for hurricanes or floods. They're "preparing" for when the country breaks down into civil war, the civil war they are actively trying [go.com] to create [cnn.com]. Because of all those immigrants taking the jobs [imgur.com].
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Is there any statistical evidence to back this up? The high voltage systems are very carefully protected in most vehicles, with fuses and disconnects.
All EVs also have a HV disconnect that you can manually remove if you are worried about flooding.
Re: Or less? (Score:2)
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An electric car is more dangerous than a gas car if it has flooded.
If your car has flooded, it's totaled. Can't say I'm overly concerned that a worthless, ruined car might catch fire. That'd be a problem for the junk yard, not me.
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An electric car is more dangerous than a gas car if it has flooded.
Well, you could always jump in the water over by the shark. Then you wouldn't get electrocuted...
Re:Or less? (Score:4, Funny)
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I simply drive away before the hurricane arrives.
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Sure, but if you're in an EV, then you're only 200 miles away before you need to wait for a few hours while the weather catches up with you.
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Sure, but if you're in an EV, then you're only 200 miles away before you need to wait for a few hours while the weather catches up with you.
If 200 miles of range isn't enough to get you away from the worst impacts of a storm, then it's the damn apocalypse, not a hurricane.
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That's not really true. If you were in the Tallahassee area and you drove 200m in the wrong direction (generally northeast), the hurricane chased you down and kept going.
If you went to the northwest then you probably fared better.
Yawn (Score:2, Informative)
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You have to buy an maintain a fairly large generator though. So you need the space for it, and it's an on-going cost that serves no other purpose.
An EV seems like a decent alternative. Not only do you get a better car with lower running costs, you can use it to get through extreme weather events and blackouts. You can also use it when you go for a picnic or camping.
Not saying that a generator isn't useful or anything like that, but unless you have the money to splurge and the space to keep it, and the willi
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You have to buy an maintain a fairly large generator though.
I run all the essentials in my home using a 3.5kw portable generator. I've been religious about keeping on top of oil changes while running it, and draining the gas before putting it away, so it still runs as good as new. While inflation has certainly done its thing if I had to buy one today, it was around $200 when I originally bought it.
The main problem with using EVs for backup power is that I need my car to be available to use as a car, not tethered to the house. In an emergency, I'll be one of those
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What do people even do if they need to go grocery shopping and their family is at home? Leave them in the dark?
Chances are the EV is just a secondary vehicle anyway, and they go grocery shopping in their ICE car. In which case the whole concept of not needing a gas generator just ends up being greenwashing, since they're still falling back to ICE power, just for transportation rather than electrical generation.
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Well, the example in TFA was someone with a Cybertruck, so it's a safe assumption they're well-off enough to own multiple vehicles.
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I think I'd prefer the EV. Rather than do maintenance on a generator and keep a supply of gas around, sure to be in demand in an emergency, I'd just have an EV that I can go charge when needed. Combined with solar people have found that combo quite effective in emergencies.
You can have a fancy solar inverter that automatically powers your whole house if the grid goes down, but a cheaper option is to just get one with an EPS output and wire a couple of sockets to it. It will then only power those sockets, si
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I had a look and I would not trust that thing to get me through a disaster. Plus isn't keeping a supply of gas around a hazard by itself?
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Typically EVs have a 50-100kWh batter, so if you can only run your house for 24 hours on that you are using a fairly extreme amount of energy. I suppose if you have to run three fridge freezers for some reason...
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Plus isn't keeping a supply of gas around a hazard by itself?
Depends on what type of emergency you're gonna be dealing with. Here in Florida we typically have really good advance notice of storms, so you buy the gas a few days before the storm is expected to hit. If you don't end up using it for the generator, it gets dumped into the tank of your vehicle.
I suppose if you no longer own any ICE vehicles, you could sell the gas to a friend. In addition to my EV, I still have a big old work van that absolutely guzzles gas, so getting rid of leftover storm prep fuel is
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That makes sense. I guess places with extreme weather can do that, but not so much places that get regular earthquakes like Japan. Probably why they were the first to develop the car-to-home technology.
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If you have an EV, you still could use the fuel to set up the generator that charges your EV.
While you technically can charge an EV from a portable generator, it's not very efficient. Someone on YouTube did the math on that with a DIY "hybrid" Tesla project.
My plan for a prolonged outage and my car running low is just to find the nearest Supercharger that has power. Most of them around here tend to be near grocery stores or places to eat, so there's that. Like I said in an earlier post, that's not really any worse than after hurricane Irma when I had to drive all over creation trying to find a g
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You have to buy an maintain a fairly large generator though.
That depends on your house and your needs. The 9000 watt portable gas backup generator (with a whole-house hookup) I use for my house during blackouts will run my entire house: central air/heat, three full size refrigerators/freezers, a dozen computers and monitors, Internet (including routers and switches), phones and tablets, all the lights in the entire house, the microwave, one stove burner, and an assortment of other devices.
It consumes about 12.5 cubic feet of storage space under a table in my garage
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Wouldn't it make sense to just run essential stuff, so your supply of gas lasts longer?
And isn't keeping a lot of gas around dangerous?
Three full size fridge freezers... How many people live there?
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No. If you actually want a battery backup for your house, you best bet is to buy a proper battery backup a la Tesla Powerwall or make your own. And if you live in a floodplain you're going to want to place that battery backup on a platform as well as relocate all electric outlets and conduit at least 3 feet off the ground if not higher. Incidentally, most houses even in floodplains are not actually designed with this in mind. Not only is the dedicated battery backup as large or larger capacity than the vehi
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Most home battery systems are a lot smaller than a vehicle batter. 15kWh is on the large end of a home battery. They are only really designed for time shifting solar generation or providing emergency power during an outage (for essentials like your fridge and heating/AC).
Even the original Nissan Leaf was 24kWh, and these days most EVs are in the 50-100kWh range.
I guess until you run out of gas (Score:4, Insightful)
You're 11000 watt generator blows through 6 gallons of gas or 20 lb of propane at 25% load in 8 hours. The 11,000 figure is the max. A large-scale power outage like this is likely to last at least a week. So without AC you need to keep about a thousand gallons of gas or 1.5 tons of propane lying around.
I suppose if you have a lot of energy efficient stuff and you don't need air conditioning and you've got gas for heat or maybe wood then you might be able to cut those figures in half but they still look pretty awful to me even if I cut them in half.
This is why you'll find anyone trying to prep for disasters building out solar and batteries instead of gas generators.
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Your numbers are way off.
A typical residential fridge uses under 700 watts. A small window air conditioner (6,000 BTU) uses around 550 watts. LED lighting and phone chargers use negligible amounts of power. If someone can get by on solar, they could just as easily (and a lot more cheaply*) get by on a smaller generator, which will use significantly less fuel.
The real power hogs in homes are central HVAC, water heating, cooking appliances, and clothes dryers. It's generally cheaper to simply find alterna
Yeah but now we're not talking about 11,000 watts (Score:2)
What you're talking about is now a completely different application. Instead of comfortably riding out the storm You're doing a bunch of annoying and frustrating things to deal with the fact that she don't have enough power for your daily needs.
In the old days when we properly funded infrastructure spending in this country that wasn't really an issue because you weren't working
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Outside of farms and ranches, most people don't have 1000-2000 sq ft of space lying around to stick solar panels on.
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We get it, you're a disaster prepper. In the mean time no one normal is storing and maintaining an 11kW gas generator at home.
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In the mean time no one normal is storing and maintaining an 11kW gas generator at home.
All you have to do to maintain them is drain the gas and replace the oil before putting it into storage. Sure, the larger portable generators are a bit more unwieldy than the smaller ones when it comes to moving them around, but it's still the same process.
;
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Slashdot was a lot smarter 25 years ago.
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Your ICE car is helpless without a block heater, and that's just the start of your problems.
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If you bothered to read even the summary you'd know that it would be almost impossible to use a vehicles full charge powering ones home in the day or so it takes for a hurricane to pass over so no, that's not a problem in real life.
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Hence the virtues of home solar which is the reason why you were bringing up hurricane cloud cover in the post I responded to.
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That was a different user
To you point though, while I dont know how much setting up 11,000 wat equipment would cost you I am aware of that fact that home solar generally pay for itself over time https://www.forbes.com/home-im... [forbes.com] so really it's the high up front cost that's the worry. In the long run solar should generally be cheaper than keeping a home generator.
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Re:Yawn (Score:5, Funny)
This will make you a primary target for roaming bands of bandits. The way to survive is to keep a low profile until the government troops arrive.
That's why in here these parts we have our guns. I got a free line of fire from 380 degrees! And that's in Fahrenheit. None of that sissy centigrade here, by golly.
The question no one asks. (Score:2, Interesting)
Will home insurance companies treat you new EV like a rabid pit bull after enough of them raze the entire house before the fire can be put out?
Bonus points if you can answer what happens to insurance rates when you don’t even own one of those newfangled rolling blowtorches, but your neighbors all do, and all of their battery-torching reserves proved more than enough to level your house too.
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How many people have died from carbon monoxide poisoning because they left the car running in the garage?
Just the ones who are really sad and the ones that are really stupid. Besides, modern cars have catalytic converters which have around a 74% efficiency at turning carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide (thus completing the combustion) so it is apparently quite difficult to die that way with a modern vehicle.
No (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens when the battery runs out?
I recharge from my solar panels.
What happens when your generator runs out of gas?
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A portable generator costs about $1000. A Cybertruck costs $80,000. Besides, hurricanes can knock out power for weeks. What happens when the battery runs out? Now you have a dead vehicle and nothing to run your fridge.
Yes, if you have a generator, you are hopefully not siphoning gas out of your car to run it. Running your fridge should not come at the expense of driving range if you decide you do have to leave after all.
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>> hurricanes can knock out power for weeks
So where are you going to get your gasoline?
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So where are you going to get your gasoline?
From the stockpile. Gasoline is far more energy dense than batteries, and thus easy to store. Granted you do want to cycle through it so it does not get old. This is easy if you have other gas powered tools like lawnmowers, chainsaws, trimmers, etc.
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So you are going to stockpile an expensive generator which will almost never run, and a few hundred gallons of gas that you'll have to replenish regularly? Better to power the house from an EV that you can drive every day and charge with solar panels that will pay for themselves.
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The thing about power outages is you can't get gas because the gas stations don't have power to run their pumps. Sure you can store a weeks worth of hazardous highly flammable material in your home, but I hope you cycle through it regularly or you'll find when that disaster strikes your generator shits itself from being fed expired fuel.
I find Americans funny. You should visit some other parts of the world and expand your mind. There's a reason poor struggling people off the grid with shithouse power connec
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Contrary to popular believe, running your entire house's AC is not a necessity during a disaster.
That depends where you live. It gets absolutely miserable here in Florida without air conditioning, and I do have a few window units that I run from my portable generator during an outage. You'd never be able to convince me that a good night's sleep isn't worth the fuel costs.
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A portable generator costs about $1000. A Cybertruck costs $80,000.
A generator that can run the essentials (fridge, lights, fans, and phone charging) is still under about $400, if you're not overly concerned about waiting for a sale. The cheapest new EV is the Chevy Equinox EV at $33.6k. Otherwise, your point still stands.
Hurricanes, power goes out (Score:2)
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So, how does one charge an EV then? Add a bit of flooding making life even more fun for the life electric.
Solar panels would be a good start. How do you fill up your gas car? Oh right you don't, the power is out and gasoline stations can't run their pumps - something that somehow surprises drivers despite it being discussed literally during every disaster.
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How do you fill up your gas car? Oh right you don't, the power is out and gasoline stations can't run their pumps - something that somehow surprises drivers despite it being discussed literally during every disaster.
Some gas stations have generator backup. Always wondered why they wouldn't with all those tanks of fuel sitting around. Anyway if you live somewhere it is likely to matter you should know which ones near you are so equipped.
Some of my fellow Canadians are going even further;
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
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So, how does one charge an EV then?
My plan is simply to just limit the amount of driving I do in my EV during an outage, until I'm sure there's DCFC stations available. Funny thing is, that's not much different than the same thing I had to do after hurricane Irma when there were gas shortages. It's probably worth mentioning that while I was without power for about a week, I didn't have to drive far at all to be somewhere that did still have power, so an EV would've actually been a lot easier to "refuel".
Good to know (Score:2)
One Louisiana man just ran cords straight from the outlets in the bed of his Tesla Cybertruck, according to the article. "We were able to run my internet router and TV, [plus] lamps, refrigerator, a window AC unit, and fans, as well as several phone, watch, and laptop chargers."
Nice that this guy is getting some use from his purchase considering it's on its fith recall [cnn.com] since last year.
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Just to be really clear, I have a very low opinion of Tesla's Cybertruck. That said, I can't help but find it amusing that people who never have anything nice to say about EVs simultaneously believe that the infrastructure to support them should magically appear from nowhere with no subsidies of any kind, but are silent about the fact that the fully mature fossil fuel sector still receives billions of dollars in subsidies every year, thus making gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs "affordable".
Watch out for flood cars (Score:2)
Lithium ion needs to go (Score:3)
It is so dumb having chemistries that produce oxygen triggering ridiculous cascading failures in gigantic battery packs with literally thousands of cells. The industry needs to switch to LFP or solid state or something that isn't so inherently dangerous.
No. Because of battery fires. (Score:3)
Like it or not, due to several REALLY bad incidents of battery fires with the originally defective battery pack on the Chevrolet Bolt and Bolt EUV, people are still highly skeptical of buying an EV, since EV's use lithium-ion battery packs with liquid electrolytes, which are highly vulnerable to igniting and the fires are just about impossible to extinguish once the fire starts.
This is why there is a major technological race to perfect solid state batteries. By eliminating the flammable electrolytes, that makes EV's a lot safer, and because of the higher storage density of solid state batteries, it also means much lighter EV's for the given range compared to today's vehicles.
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Yeah, except for the glaringly obvious fact that hurricanes have gotten neither more frequent nor worse. Instead, human habitation has expanded farther into flood plains and become significantly more expensive to replace.
Re:They should, but not just for that reason (Score:4, Informative)
An EV doesn't break even on climate until about 220K miles
Do you have a citation for that factoid?
Here's an article that says break even is 15k [reuters.com], so your number is way off.
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Do you have a citation for that factoid?
Here's an article that says break even is 15k, so your number is way off.
Interesting, this same article includes an alternate estimate.
"University of Liege researcher Damien Ernst said in 2019 that the typical EV would have to travel nearly 700,000 km before it emitted less CO2 than a comparable gasoline vehicle. He later revised his figures down.
Now, he estimates the break-even point could be between 67,000 km and 151,000 km. Ernst told Reuters he did not plan to change those findings, which were based on a different set of data and assumptions than in Argonne's model."
Personal
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Either link your sources or go away.
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