[gotorazor]

other issues aside, why are people always so obsessed about what happens when "there's an emergency"? I remember 15 years ago, when unlimited-talk cellphone plans began to be price-competitive with copper-wire home phones, all these people were trying to justify having copper-wire home phone lines because of "emergencies". "What if the power went out? How would you call 911?"

[sokoloff]

I view emergency preparedness as part of my responsibility to my family (and, to a lesser extent, to my community). So much so that this seems like a strange question.

People worry about what happens when there’s an emergency because people die in mishandled emergencies and failing to think ahead tends to increase this risk.

[InCityDreams]

Survivor bias.

[robomartin]

> why are people always so obsessed about what happens when "there's an emergency"?

Because that's when what you prepared and did not prepare for matters?

I'll use an unrelated parallel. I've done a lot of work in aerospace, often covering systems that are in a range between critical and life support.

If we design for ideal or normal conditions, bad things happen and people die. We have to design for a range of failure-tolerance levels. For example, a critical life support system might require that it continue to function property with as many as three failures, whereas a flight system might specify two.

We obsess over these things because they matter when things go wrong, not before.

Same with life. You have various kinds of insurance for when things go wrong. Same with vehicles, energy and food.

Back a couple of years ago (I think it was that long) we had severe fires in CA. People with Teslas were told not to charge. They had serious problems.

The difference between a normal F150 and an electric F150 is that you can obtain hundreds of miles of range in five minutes at tens of thousands of locations. In most of the country, this means you have access to fuel every two to five miles. It also means you can safely keep hundreds of miles of range in inexpensive containers at home. It would be easy to decide to keep a thousand miles of fuel that you can easily carry with you. Even easier and safer if it is diesel. This is impossible with electric vehicles.

Under normal conditions electric vehicles --and the charging network that support them-- are great. If you limit assessment of risk to normal conditions you'd be making a big mistake.

Before you say "it can't happen". Well, the pandemic taught us otherwise. I used to live less than a mile from the epicenter of the last powerful earthquake in CA. Lots of people turn into cavemen when that happens. I won't recount the things I say. Let's just say I was both surprised and not surprised. Things like people (my neighbors) taking dozens of cases of water they did not need, making it difficult for those who needed it to have enough of a supply. People can be absolute assholes that way.

I would not want to be in a situation where an electric vehicle becomes the difference between my family being safe and not. And using one to power my house --giving up range-- would be dumb as fuck. Before people get bent out of shape, imagine our electric future, where everything in your home is electric, including heating and cooling. You can easily consume 5 kW per hour for 10 or more hours per day. That means depleting over 50 kWh from your vehicle's battery in just one day. Yeah. In an emergency, you might have to travel 100 miles or more before being able to charge. One reason is likely to be that charging stations become overwhelmed. Yeah. Bad idea.

Another interesting variant on the theme. We have multiple vehicles. All I need is a hose to transfer fuel from one to the next and maximize range. In fact, I can transfer fuel from my vehicles into containers and then use the remaining vehicle to get out.

This isn't about being paranoid. The pandemic taught us a bunch of lessons we should not forget. Living life like black swan events can never happen isn't smart, particularly if your loved ones depend on the decisions you make for their wellbeing.