[iamatworknow]

To me it all still comes down to charging infrastructure. The current state of batteries is good enough for me, but I live in an apartment and can't charge at home, and the availability/reliability local charging stations are a crap shoot, nevermind charging on a road trip.

But when (if?) I own my own house and can charge at home, I'll be in even with the current state of batteries.

[kd5bjo]

My primary concern with the charging infrastructure is how well it will handle a large number of people taking emergency trips at the same time. How do you evacuate south Florida with an incoming hurricane, for example, when most people have switched from gasoline to electric cars?

That scenario pushes the existing fuel delivery infrastructure to its limit already, and electric chargers provide significantly fewer passenger miles per fueling minute than a gasoline pump does. In practice, a lot of emergency plans will need to be completely overhauled to not assume most people will be able to drive themselves out of the danger zone.

[snowwrestler]

This is a good point and I think the answer is that solutions for in-place charging will need to be regulated or subsidized into existence in step with the shifting market share of electric cars.

The typical range of a fully charged electric car these days is sufficient to get out of the way of almost any predictable natural disaster. So the trick is just keeping them all fully charged at home. Any homeowner can in theory have a charger off their home power grid, but for folks in apartments and condos there will need to be a lot more than just a few chargers in the corner of the garage. There may even need to be street-side solutions. But it’s all doable and the engineering is straightforward.

People allow gas cars to sit with nearly empty tanks because it is so fast (and expensive) to fill them up. Electric cars are slow and cheap to “fill up” so the mindset and culture about it will change over time.

[rawgabbit]

During Hurricane Rita in 2005, over 2 million Houstonians got on the road to avoid its wrath. It took anywhere from 12 to 36 hours to reach their destination.

Many ran out of gas but roadside assistance were able to fuel them up and get them going again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Rita_evacuation

[dangus]

Well, the thing is that EVs are just “less bad” version of personal automobiles, which are a very inefficient way to get a large amount of people from one place to another.

Houston is a city that is so large that it should have frequent passenger train service to other metropolitan areas, but it doesn’t because it has been designed for cars and planes.

You can fit a lot of people in a train, and in emergencies even more people can occupy the train in standing areas.

When cars get stuck in traffic where they’re going <25mph their main flaw is revealed: the fact that you can frequently beat a car stuck in traffic using a bicycle.

[kd5bjo]

> The typical range of a fully charged electric car these days is sufficient to get out of the way of almost any predictable natural disaster.

Maybe, and maybe not. The one time I had to do this myself, I started with a full gas tank and still ended up stopping to fill a couple of times. An evacuation is hardly the ideal condition for range, with lots of stop-and-go traffic. You need to not only get out of immediate danger but also find some safe place to lodge overnight that doesn’t interfere with the people behind you that also need to get out.

[ch_sm]

> There may even need to be street-side solutions. But it’s all doable and the engineering is straightforward.

That‘s true! Vienna, Austria has over a thousand street-side chargers already. They‘re tiny and right next to the parking spot.