NOTE:
Donn Dears writes consistently good articles that get to important points quickly, without wasting words, as you would expect from an engineer who is also a good writer. There have been many articles recently about EVs stranded on a highway during a winter storm. Some were published here. Some of them also mentioned using EVs to escape a hurricane. None of them covered the subject as well as these three Don Dears' articles, combined on one page here:
Ye Editor
Should battery-powered vehicles be outlawed?, by Donn Dears
"The answer is no, but the government must stop trying to force Americans to buy them.
This includes ending subsidies that encourage buying battery-powered vehicles (BEVs) and ending CAFE standards that eventually force the public to buy BEVs.
Safety is the primary reason for ending the support of BEVs. Cost is next in importance.
The Achilles Heel of BEVs is the need to recharge their batteries.
There are situations where BEVs could endanger people’s lives.
The recent Virginia snowstorm was more than an inconvenience for stranded drivers. Still, it would have been far more serious if the vehicles had been BEVs with fully discharged, inoperable batteries.
An internal combustion engine vehicle (ICE) that runs out of gasoline can have the gasoline brought to it so that the vehicle isn’t stranded. A BEV, on the other hand, must be towed to a charging station.
While the Virginia snowstorm was serious, a hurricane could be disastrous. ... "
Achilles Heel of Battery-Powered Vehicles, Part 1, by Donn Dears
"Is charging battery-powered vehicles (BEVs) merely a nuisance?
Or is it something more serious?
Here is a scenario that needs to be considered:
Evacuations ahead of hurricanes
Every year the states along the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast are threatened by hurricanes.
Every year there will almost certainly be a hurricane that will threaten one of these states and evacuations will be required of those living near the ocean.
Evacuations mean that most families will climb into their car and head inland, or, in the case of Florida, up the state toward Georgia.
What will it mean if all those family cars are BEVs and not powered by internal combustion engines, i.e., ICE vehicles?
BEVs will be able to travel 350 miles on average at highway speeds, but how far will they be able to travel in stop-and-go traffic averaging 20 miles per hour or so?
How much will air-conditioning drain their batteries, further limiting how far they can travel?
Maybe 150 miles? Whether 150 or 200 miles, at this point they will need to recharge their batteries.
Assuming fast chargers are available, each fast charger will be able to fully recharge two vehicles per hour. But there will be thousands of vehicles needing to be recharged.
Even if 20 fast chargers were readily available as BEV batteries started to run down, it would take a full day to recharge 1,000 vehicles.
There would be hundreds, if not thousands of BEVs stranded along the highways and roads.
Where would the people go who had to abandon their BEVs as the hurricane approached?
An ICE vehicle that ran out of gas can have the gas brought to the car to get it moving again, so that it’s not abandoned.
But a stranded BEV has to be towed to the charging station.
... Think of evacuating people from the barrier islands of North and South Carolina across a limited number of bridges.
Or from Galveston Texas inland, competing with the evacuation traffic from Houston.
BEVs could become a death trap and are totally unsuited for conditions such as these.
And what happens after the hurricane has severely damaged the electric grid?
Part 2 will discuss recovering from a hurricane with battery-powered vehicles."
Achilles Heel of Battery-Powered Vehicles, Part 2, by Donn Dears
"All eyes will turn to restoring electricity to customers after a hurricane.
Before the hurricane strikes, electric utilities will have mobilized their equipment and personnel to be ready to restore power as soon as the storm has passed.
The primary piece of equipment used to restore electric service will be the bucket truck.
Bucket trucks are mobilized before a hurricane.
But in the future, with net-zero carbon policies, these trucks will all be battery powered.
For background:
There are two types of battery-powered bucket trucks being built today.
There is the hybrid truck that uses the battery to operate the boom, while still using a diesel engine to power the truck.
This improves working conditions since the diesel can be shut down while the truck is stopped and work is being done on the overhead lines.
This type of hybrid truck won’t be made when all vehicles are to be battery-powered.
The second type of bucket truck is brand new, and is currently being made by Lion Electric of Quebec Canada.
Being new, there is little real world operating experience.
Consolidated Edison in New York, which is buying these trucks, has said, “The truck should have a range of 130 miles, and can be recharged in 8 hours using Level 2 chargers.”
How will battery-powered bucket trucks perform after a hurricane?
Electricity will be unavailable until the power lines are repaired.
It can take several days to restore electricity to everyone in an area affected by a hurricane.
The battery-powered truck will only be able to operate for about eight hours before the batteries will have to be recharged.
At the end of eight hours, electricity will have only been restored to a small fraction of the affected area.
So how will the bulk of these trucks be able to recharge their batteries?
Will these bucket trucks become a few thousand pounds of useless equipment stranded in remote locations?
This is a conundrum about which no one has apparently given much serious thought.
Consolidated Edison in New York is buying battery-powered bucket trucks without explaining how they will operate under conditions where electricity isn’t readily available.
If all vehicles are battery powered, will it be possible to recover from disasters such as those caused by hurricanes or large snow storms?"
Donn's new book, Net-zero Carbon, The Climate Policy Destroying America, delves into the strategic reasons why relying on battery-powered vehicles may be bad for the United States.