What happens when your electric car runs out of power, and no charging stations are close?

Call for tow truck that would transport and AWD (flatbed) to get you to a charging station.

You bring out the hamster wheel, and call Richard Gere to bring you a Gerbil.

Do a Fred Flintstone and get those feet a’movin’!

You regret having purchased an EV and the following day you go to a dealer and but one with an ICE.

One of two things: You walk or you call a tow truck.
If the tow truck had charging abilities, they couldn’t afford to sit out there that long to recharge your battery. (You should have brought your own gas operated generator.)

It seems to me that it would be prudent to plan your trip so as to keep you near a charging station. My understanding is that you’ll know how many miles you can go on a single charge & personally, I’d stop probably 50 miles sooner to top off in order to make sure that my EV didn’t die at an inopportune moment!!! Most of my local hotels have several charging stations that paying guests may use for free & those NOT staying with them may pay to use. It’s been over 8 years since the last time I ran out of gas & I would think that depleting the battery would be a bigger pain in the butt so I’d be more paranoid about allowing it to happen!!!

I’ve literally seen at least one guy with a small gasoline generator in his EV’s trunk.

I wager solar power will eventually power most conventional vehicles.

You get towed by an ICE tow truck.

It sounds like an unappealing pain in the ass.

This is one of the things holding EVs back. It’s the range anxiety. Yes, you will want to be smart about managing your capacity, and these vehicles often are better about alerting you about running low than conventional gas vehicles because they have more electronics.

But the main thing to remember is that you’re probably plugging in every night. You aren’t going a week or two without refueling, you’re doing it every night and you’re almost never getting close to ‘empty’. Even if you forget a day, for most commuters, you’re fine.

But it is undeniably a bigger PITA to run out of juice than to run out of gas.

AAA offers remote charging to get you short range to a charging station. (in select cities currently)

No additional charge to your membership.

EVs are great for local commuting but not road tripping unfortunately. You have to plan everything.

I would not consider an EV until this wasn’t a possibility. Too many moving parts to not at least have an emergency battery that is charged by the car’s main battery and/or moving parts during operation that would get you to safety. I’m considering a hybrid that charges the battery when operating on gasoline. My best friend has that and is very happy with it.

I think EVs are a fine idea, but there are so many problems inherent with them that that idea is really more of a pipe dream. Running out of power or unavailability are only a few of the issues.

1) This almost never happens to anyone. Not only do EV users tend to pay attention to their charge level, but the cars are computerized and let you know when you’re getting anywhere near a low charge. They also tend to have buffers, so even when you reach “0% charge”, you still have significant power left. They also have nav systems with the nearest chargers, as do the various apps the EV drivers use. How many times have you run out of gas in an ICE? I never have. Only once did I accidentally get really low in an ICE.

2) If an EV does actually run out, or get stranded due to a malfunction. Yes, they can be towed. And BTW @elbanditoroso there are tow trucks that are EVs, too.

3) They can also be recharged in place, if someone has a recharging unit. There are some battery units that are small enough to be carried in your trunk.

4) I’m shocked at how many wrong and backward answers there are up there.

“I number it among my blessings that my father had no car, while yet most of my friends had, and sometimes took me for a drive. This meant that all these distant objects could be visited just enough to clothe them with memories and not impossible desires, while yet they remained ordinarily as inaccessible as the Moon. The deadly power of rushing about wherever I pleased had not been given [to] me. I measured distances by the standard of man, man walking on his two feet, not by the standard of the internal combustion engine. I had not been allowed to deflower the very idea of distance; in returned I possessed ‘infinite riches’ in what would have been to motorists ‘a little room.’ The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it ‘annihilates space.’ It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventures than his grandfather got from travelling ten. Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once? There is little enough space there.”

C.S. Lewis

This is really only a concern in very remote areas or with EVs that have a tiny range. Should this happen, you’d need to be towed to the nearest charger. Charging stations are basically everywhere at this point, RV campgrounds, restaurants, hotels/inns, and even gas stations.

I see there are different types of charging stations. From what I understand, some take hours. It’s more inconvenient than filling a gas tank, which takes about five minutes. So even if you found a charging station close by, it might be hours of waiting for it to charge before you can go on your way.

@jca2 That’s true, but also not commonly done. I reviewed my charging history for the past 12 months. Literally 99% of the time I spent charging was at home. It’s level 2. It takes hours (I think 35 miles of range every hour or thereabouts). I charge it up overnight and wake up with plenty of range every day. If I’m on a road trip, I’ll stop at a supercharger and grab lunch or something. It usually only takes about 30 minutes or so to “fill up” to something like 80% charge (that’s level 3 charging). The newest vehicles being made can charge at speeds approaching double that rate now. If I somehow managed to run my battery all the way to 0, I’d get a tow truck and have them take me to the nearest supercharger, and I’d be back on the road pretty quickly.

A lot is made of range anxiety, but I’ve had my EV for nearly 6 years and it’s never came up for me once in that time. If my road trip is extremely long 600ish miles or more, the inconvenience of charging would start to play a factor in my decision to possibly take a gas car for the trip instead. That said, If the trip is over 600 miles, I’m taking a plane anyways. Driving that far is stressful and exhausting and not worth it. I realize other people are different.

Again:

NO – an empty EV wouldn’t necessarily be towed – with a recharger, it could also be recharged on the spot (e.g. enough to drive itself to a charger).

NO – even if you end up at a slow charger, you can for example. recharge just enough to get to a faster charger.

Yes it is not the same situation as filling a gas car, and yes it can be less convenient, or take more time or more planning. But that would only be on a very long-range trip. Overall, I find using an EV is much much easier, because what actually happens, is I just plug it in at home, or sometimes at a free charger when I’m shopping, which actually takes LESS time than refueling, because all I do is plug it in, leave, and then unplug it when I drive. I don’t need to stand around while it charges, at all.

So in practice, I have not yet had to wait for my EV to charge AT ALL! It’s just always been charged enough, and then it recharges when I’m not using it.