efaardvark

Weird.. today I've had several people ask me if my car is ok, or if I'm worried about it. 

Ok, rewind a bit for some recent local history.  Over the past couple days my area has had some very dry, warm, high-velocity winds come through.  In the past these sorts of conditions have caused power lines to get knocked down into dry brush and the winds whip up the resulting fire(s) into extremely dangerous wildfires.  Fires, evacuations, and/or electricity outages have been a hot topic of conversation around here for the past couple days.  The power companies' web sites have hundreds of thousand of customers in the area on notice for potentially having their power cut off, either by the power company itself, ostensibly for preventing downed power lines from starting said fires, or by the fires and wind taking out the power distribution lines.

So back to the strange question.  At first I was like, "huh?".  Did I not get a memo or something?  Did I park somewhere I shouldn't have?  Did they see my car on the news get run over or pushed off the road by a fire department bulldozer?  (Sometimes this happens when the fire department needs to get access to a fire and their trucks or other firefighting gear is blocked by cars parked on narrow streets.)

In a word, no.  Apparently people are concerned that people like me with electric vehicles might have trouble evacuating if they have to because of the power outages that tend to accompany the fires.

Again, "huh??", but with a different tone of voice this time.  Thanks for the concern, but of all the stupid things to worry about that's .... not a problem.

First of all, I don't even have an EV.  I have a pluggable hybrid.  I do have an electric motor (or three) and batteries, and a charging socket on one side of the car.  I also have the usual slot for gas (petrol for you crazy furriners) on the other side, connected to a gas tank and a somewhat normal internal combustion engine.  Not worried at all here.  I'm covered either way.

Second, if the power is out then gas cars would have exactly the same problem as pure EVs because gas station pumps run on electricity.  No electricity, no charging (duh), but also no gas.  I've actually had this problem before with my old (gas) car.  In fact, standard operating procedure around here is if you hear that high winds or dry/dangerous fire conditions are in the forecast then stop at the gas station on your way home from work and top off the tank, just in case.

Third, that typically doesn't matter because gas or electrons, there's always going to be something left in the "tank".  (Unless you're one of those people who is always running on "Empty", but that's a whole other discussion.)  When the police/fire department comes pounding on your door and tells you to evacuate then you just get in your car and leave with what you have.  Gas or electric doesn't enter into it any more than the color of your socks.

(That said, even if you're one of those "I'm not out of gas the car is still moving" people, chances are better your electric car will be at least somewhat charged.  More than when you parked it anyway.  Unlike a gas car, you can "refuel" an EV at home by plugging it in, and most take only a few hours at most to fully recharge.  Assuming you're not so extremely lazy that you can't even be bothered to plug in your car when you park it in your garage, chances are that by the time the power goes out and/or you have to evacuate you'll have at least a partial charge on your EV.  A gas car's gas gauge of course would still be on "E", and the nearby gas station that's out of power is not going to be able to help.)

There is one actual problem with gas cars however.  It has even been reported on the local news, and warned about at press conferences with the fire department spokespeople.  Sometimes when people wait a bit too long to evacuate there's so much smoke in the air that it can clog the air filter and cause a car to stall.  Cars have to breathe too you know.  At least gas cars that rely on oxygen in the air for combustion do.  EV cars obviously don't have this problem.  (And again, don't worry about me.. my hybrid has an EV-only mode that's only a button-push away.)