What happens if you have an EV only and the power goes down for days?

I’m guessing you’d have to find a charger at a mall or elsewhere.

It seems there are a lot of downsides to EV at present, with limited charging stations especially in the countryside.

You would need a solar charger or have a hybrid.

This is why I would choose a hybrid at this point. I know too many people who have EVs who have run into infrastructure problems.

You can buy a gas-powered charger for EV’s. Much like generators for homes.
They are portable and low-carbon propane chargers, too.
You can use a home outlet with a mobile charging cord.

I think the whole EV rollout by a certain deadline is a little overly enthusiastic by the EV proponent people.

Gas stations don’t work without electricity either.

If the person has solar with battery back up they can charge their car. They are completely self sufficient.

Some parts of Florida have reported 4 hour lines to get gas (because they line up before gas is received by the gas station) or trouble finding gas.

If they go to a place that has charging stations that are working they can charge their car. Electricity is repaired near hospitals and commercial centers first.

If they have a house generator they might be able to charge their car.

I think hybrid makes the most sense in general, but it really depends on the individual situation.

I go to the supercharger. I think it’s happened once in the 6+ years I’ve owned my EV. It’s a non-issue. If power is out over the entire state, then the gas pumps will also not function.

Hybrids are a terrible choice IMO, they have all of the downsides, maintenance and expense of gas, but they also have the extra added weight from all of that which means there isn’t much capacity for batteries. This means the batteries are constantly cycling from 0% to 100% which will quickly degrade them and they are costly. EV batteries last 200k or more miles because you’re usually going between 70% and 30% or something like that. That keeps them happy for a very long time.

EV’s are the ideal option for the vast majority of people. Exceptions are people who aren’t able to have a charger at their residence to use at night or at their work during the day, people who drive crazy amounts (over 300 mi) every day. People who tow heavy things regularly over long distances and the EV is the only vehicle they would have, or a handful of other unique situations.

There are many apartment buildings that have no charging stations.

I’m envisioning even if you lived in a building that did have a charging station, in the winter when you want to put your pajamas on and hang out, you have to keep track of the time and go back out to unplug the car and move it out if the way for the next car to charge. That would be a big inconvenience, to me. Maybe in a house it’s more convenient. I live in a house but in bad weather, the kast thing I feel like doing is having to go back out.

@jca2 Most chargers at home take 6+ hours to charge, they’re not the superchargers that take 30 minutes. I would imagine at an apartment complex you’d park your car overnight at the charger and not be expected to unplug it the minute it was done charging (I could be wrong of course). There’s also Lamppost chargers being installed in urban areas that should help as well.

I don’t doubt you’re correct. What then if a building only has one station and multiple people need to charge? Someone is going to be screwed.

@jca2 You’re right. If there are insufficient chargers for an apartment, then people will get screwed. I certainly wouldn’t want an EV if I lived in a place where there was insufficient charging for it, or more likely I’d find a different place to live that did have enough chargers since my wife and I both own EVs.

The good news is that chargers are reasonably affordable to install. I know if I lived at an apartment that didn’t have sufficient EV charging, I’d be talking to the property owner about it. With all of the incentives out there, it’s a no-brainer for them to put more in.

No, it’s not.

1) I have never in all my life, had my power go out for days.
2) I have never in all my life, lived somewhere where the power has gone out for a significant amount of time, over an area that was so large I couldn’t drive my EV to someplace with power.
3) If the power DOES go out for that long, over such a large area, the reason for it is probably nuclear war or some environmental disaster of such scope, that my EV’s battery level is likely to be the least of my worries.
4) If the power does go out for so long, over such a large area, that it’s a problem for EVs, most gas cars are going to be hurting too, because most sources of gasoline involve an electric pump, and there will probably be transportation and supply problems for fuel too.
5) There are other sources for electricity besides the grid, such as local solar panels, that can be used to charge EVs (but are of little use to gas cars).
6) My EV battery generally lasts me for days, anyway, even if I didn’t recharge. In a disaster where the power were out for many days over an area where there was no power I knew of for hundreds of miles in any direction, I’d ration the use of my EV battery (and my clean water, and food, etc).

Wow, @Zaku, you are fortunate where you live! Sandy took my power for four days, and I have lived places where it’s been longer.

A small gas powered generator might be helpful.

Same here, @canid. 8 nights without power for Sandy. Another hurricane a few years after, maybe 3 nights out.

@Zaku I had no power for 12 days after Sandy and it was widespread throughout the area. With a previous one it was about 6 days. It is not a non-issue.

EVs at 20* F take two times as long to charge or more. The batteries in the EV are heating themselves to optimize their power.

I live in an apartment complex with 470 units…nope, they’re not going to begin installing chargers. I’ll stay with my hybrid tyvm.

I have a Dunkin Donuts about five minutes away that has a few charging stations, however, if I had an EV, I’d need to have someone pick me up from leaving a car there, and then taking me back six hours later, or the next morning. Quite inconvenient.

I live where golf carts are used as transportation in addition to cars. Half of the 70,000 golf carts here are electric, and yet no charging stations for them anywhere.

I can’t think of any car charging stations anywhere near me either, and several friends have electric cars, but it is a small percentage I see driving around here.

I wonder if that is a business? Can I set up a charging station and make money charging people? Is it random private companies doing that?

@Fortunate Fellow has a home power generator.
I wonder if he could use it to recharge an EV.

We have 24 charging stations about 6 miles from my house.

At my house, the garage has 50 AMP 220 service !

Fortunate, or just, the closest I’ve ever lived to hurricane country, is Chicago. But again, if you have power out for two weeks for hundreds of miles in all directions due to hurricanes, I expect your gas car is also at risk, and not the greatest of your concerns in any case.

I’m not sure how long an EV will hold a charge, if it’s charged but not used.

I know during Sandy, I went to Massachusetts to a friend’s time share. I had gas, so getting there was no problem (about a 2 hour drive), and there was no power outage up there so I could fill the tank. I stayed there for 8 nights. In the area I live in, there were cities thirty miles away that didn’t lose power, where the gas stations were fine but I was hearing stories about long lines at the pumps.

I’ve never seen power out for hundreds of miles in all directions from a hurricane. Outages start getting repaired as soon as the storm passes, so you have power restored to infrastructure fairly quickly. Residential far from infrastructure might take much longer. We even have Canadian linemen working in Florida right now, they come from everywhere.

Areas washed out by flood that can’t be accessed obviously can’t be repaired right away. That’s why people near waterways should evacuate. If they live through the storm they might die in the aftermath.

@jca2 EV’s hold their charge a long time. The car could probably sit a month and still have most of it’s power.

We are hearing that flooding from saltwater is contributing to EV’s catching on fire. I don’t know how widespread that is.

@Zaku I live where winter ice storms have taken out power for up to a week nearly once a year. Northern New England (Maine, NH, Vermont) gets massive snow and ice storms that wreak havoc on large old beautiful trees. Roads are winding, narrow, and hilly. Generators are a must to keep your pipes from freezing. For this alone, I would not get an EV.

@jca2 “I’m not sure how long an EV will hold a charge, if it’s charged but not used.”
– Depends on whether or not it’s doing anything with its power. An EV with a large battery that’s actually shut down seems to lose 1% or less per month when stored in a garage doing nothing. So, several years, at least.

@JLeslie Saltwater flooding tends to do a number on gas cars, too.

@Forever_Free Ah, massive snow lasting in some rural areas – I can see that might block both the roads and shut down the power for days, especially if the snow keeps falling so no one can clear all the roads, especially with fallen trees, hills, etc. Though again, that’s going to be a problem for non-EVs too. So, one would want to plan to be isolated, regardless of car tech. EVs do have reduced performance in extreme cold. So maybe.

Another point though, is that EVs don’t need a station to charge. I do almost all my charging from a standard wall jack. So in an emergency, anyplace that has a standard plug with power that’s close enough to plug in, could recharge the car, if slowly.

The fallacy of composition.

You could just as easily argue that the downside of switching to ICE powered vehicle is the risk your tank is empty when the local gas station closes for a long weekend without notice.

Hahaha, this has devolved into sort of a competition. EVs are probably more appropriate for some locations and climates, and gas powered/hybrids for others. It is starting to sound like the “ebooks vs paper books” argument.

When I bought my last car in 2015, I seriously considered an EV. So I asked a lot of questions. I don’t go far afield any more, and the primary grid in my state, at that time, was powered by gasoline/petroleum products. The standards for regulating emissions were much less strict for power plants than for new cars. Maybe it has changed now, I don’t know, but there is a big picture to consider.

In my area, the most power busters are storms that are somewhat predictable, so my needs are different from @Zaku.’s I can store gas in cans in my garage if I need to. And as long as I keep hearing that maybe 3 out of 7 charging stations tend not to work in this place or that, I will be less likely to go all electric.

I imagine my next car will be my last, and it will likely be a hybrid.

Interesting timing of this topic, the local power company is warning of power outages over the next three days to avoid downed lines starting fires. All the local Teslas are charging up this morning,

Buy a generator.

Ironically, generators run on gasoline.

^^Many do. Some use natural gas, another evil fuel. What to do!?! What to do!?

There are solar generators, but they take a while to charge up. People who have them, charge them before the storm, and then they can use the battery and continue to charge during sunny hours. A friend of mine has one that can run a small fridge (I think like a dorm room fridge) and charge her phone and other small things. This is the brand she bought Grecell

I don’t remember if I wrote this before, but when out power went out at 9:15 at night during Milton, within a minute a neighbor behind me had their noisy generator turn on. At least the solar wouldn’t be noisy.

@Zaku For sure. Any flooding will ruin a car, and salt water probably corrodes the parts quickly. The fire hazard seemed to be specific to EV’s, but I also do believe it is a Republican talking point, so I am aware of the politics in it.

Multilevel parking garages in Tampa had free parking available for people who live in flood zones.

I’ve looked into generators but they don’t make sense in my situation.

I have a generator. I never use it.

Some people who don’t have EVs tend to worry that charging them will be a problem. My experience has been more or less the opposite: it really means I barely ever think much at all about recharging it, because I just leave it plugged in at home, and my driving uses less power than it stores, so there’s almost never anything for me to think about it.

The exceptions are for people who don’t have a garage, or who do frequent long-distance in very places that lack chargers.

@canidmajor My experience on the many long trips I’ve taken in the EV, is that there have been plenty of working and available fast-chargers, even only using one or two preferred brands of charging station. In the few cases where there was any issue with a station I wanted to use, there are various apps which make detecting that issue, and when it happens, finding and planning a route using alternative chargers, pretty easy, at least once one learns about them. It seemed annoying the first time I went on a long trip. But by the third long trip, it had become pretty easy, and it only seems easier each time I’ve done it.

@JLeslie Yes, it’s possible to get enough solar panels, along with a battery system, that can keep your house powered off the grid. And you can charge an EV with such. Some EVs also let you charge a house with the car’s battery (and a modern EV’s battery has more capacity than most such systems, and tends to be rather cheaper per kWh).

Other generators can of course also be used to charge EVs, if that’s ever actually needed.

So if you really wanted to prep for disaster, you could get a generator and hoard some gasoline or whatever fuel it takes.

@Zaku I’m glad you haven’t really had any problems, it seems the EV was a good choice for you. Along the I95 Boston-DC corridor, my friends have had some problems, maybe they just don’t maintain the systems that well.

@canidmajor While I’m sure it’s quite possible to have bad experiences, and that your friends have, I’m a bit surprised that area would be a problem, even if the maintainers are slacking off.

That area is full of cities and well-used highways, and it looks like there are plenty of chargers. Perhaps there are so many EVs using them, especially at peak times, that they get busy and hard to predict which ones will fill up before you get to an area. That’d be my main concern.

But for example it took me less than a minute to pull up ABRP and generate a route plan from DC to Boston that takes into account the current repair state of chargers near the route. One can zoom in and see there are many alternative chargers nearby. If I got to one of the suggested chargers and it was a problem, I can tell ABRP to not use that charger, and it’ll find a close good alternate nearby and route me to it. ABRP can easily export a route to Google Maps, so you can get voice navigation to get there without much effort, assuming you have a mobile device.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that couldn’t still be annoying, especially in someplace like Newark in busy traffic. But Newark in busy traffic can be annoying in any case. I’d probably plan to charge in less hectic areas.

@Zaku OK, whatever, you win. Personally, I would hate to have to hunt around on the internet for alternate fuel sources, but then I’m old and curmudgeonly, and my plan is still sound, as I haven’t heard anything about the upgrading of emissions amelioration on our local power plants, yet.
Like I said, at this point there are a number of appropriate options for everybody.

I didn’t read all the responses, but I imagine it’s the same sort of situation as having a gas vehicle and not being able to find any gas.

@LifeQuestioner I’ve been driving for over 40 years and haven’t ever not been able to find any gas.

It’s one of many not-very-relevant-to-common-reality worries promoted by the gas industry (and for some stupid reason, some Republicans) to try to discourage enthusiasm for EVs.

There are some valid real reasons why some people might not want to get an EV, such as the current cost of buying some of the current better models, or needing to learn new things, or certain use cases (such as not having a place to park near a power outlet, or needing to drive long).

But the one in the title here, I would say, is not a great reason to avoid EVs, for most people.

@Zaku I forgot about the EV being able to run the house like a back up battery. That is interesting and attractive. I don’t even bother setting up the generators I have when my electricity goes out, so I’m not very concerned if I lose power once every three years for a day, but my needs could change as I get older. Plus, if having a car can replace having to buy a back up battery that could be a big savings. I guess if you use the car batteries on a regular basis for power at night with a solar system you wear out those batteries faster.

@JLeslie Yes, bi-directional charging is quite cool, but currently, it’s not an automatic ability of any EV. Ones that do include:

Nissan Leaf
Ford F150 Lightning
Several (most?) EV models of Hyundai, Genesis and Kia
Jeep Wrangler 4xe
VW ID.4 (not all of them though)

Some GM EVs can also be upgraded to do it.

I think there’s also some electrical equipment to add to the house so it will switch over, and you’d likely want at least some static battery there too, so you don’t always need the EV to be plugged in to have a backup power source.

https://www.cars.com/articles/whats-bidirectional-charging-and-which-evs-offer-it-457608/

The limitations of the EVs are legion. Losing power and not being able to get a charge is only one. The answer to the question though is that yes, when the power goes down for a long time you cannot charge it from a normal station. You might be able to jury rig something to allow you to charge from a fossil fuel generator. I see the irony in that. But whether that is a problem or not is kinda up in the air. If you aren’t planning on going anywhere, it doesn’t matter if the car is sitting in the driveway. The battery will slowly discharge on its own, but that could take quite a long time. If you are planning on going somewhere, it will all depend on how much charge you have on the battery when the power goes out as to whether you can get where you are planning to go or not.

I’m in a FB group for a small city that’s about 45 minutes from me (a city that I used to work in, which is why I remain interested in the goings-on there) and it’s ironic that someone recently posted a photo of a big Sierra pickup truck parked in an EV charging station overnight, not to charge (because it’s a gas powered vehicle) but just for a parking spot (as that city has very little parking off street overnight). The person who posted said they called the police on the Sierra and the police said “unless there’s a sign saying they can’t park there, they can.” The person who posted was very mad because the purpose of the spot was for charging, not for anybody to park.

^^ Someone needs to post a metal sign saying “Parking for EV Charging Only. Violators will be towed.”

@smudges Yes, I guess that’s up to the city or to whoever owns the charging station, and unless that happens, I am guessing it’s a free parking spot.

@jca2 and @smudges That gets back to the stunt Sect Granholm pulled. She was going to drive an EV on a publicity stunt for EVs from Charlotte NC to Memphis TN via SC and GA. She caught a lot of heat because she had gas powered cars as part of her entourage that would drive ahead and block the EV charging stations that she wanted to use. At one in GA, there was a line of EVs waiting, including one that had a very pregnant woman. The gas car refused to move and one of those in the EVs called the cops. What they were told was that there really wasn’t a law against blocking the charging stations so there was nothing they could do to force the gas car to move. Putting up signs might be fine, but if there are no actual laws to back them up, there is no teeth in the threat of towing.

Well if there are no signs up there will certainly be no incentive to cooperate. I would guess that if the owners of the charging stations put up signs, that it would qualify as trespassing or blocking access to private property. At any rate, it looks like it will take some time for statutes to catch up to the need.

Another thought with the charging stations is that I believe they belong to the company that made/placed them and not to any particular location they are at. That could add to the issue. Passing laws to keep from blocking only EV stations could be problematic and possibly challenged in courts.

We have solar at home, so we’d be able to charge if the grid goes down.