Imagine Virginia’s icy traffic catastrophe – but with only electric vehicles | Hacker News Reader

Imagine Virginia’s icy traffic catastrophe – but with only electric vehicles

washingtonpost.com

19 pointsrufus_foreman19 comments

Here in Norway it is common knowledge to not head out into a winter storm or driving over a mountain pass without having a full(ish) tank / charge. It is advised to bring warm blankets, clothes, water and some food. Getting stranded at a moutainpass or in a tunnel waiting for a storm to clear enough to allow the plough truck to lead the way is routine in the winter, it is the rule and not the exeption.

Of course there are always some who do not head the warnings, but they are the exeption to the rule.

This winter we also experienced a sudden heavy snowfall in the south of Norway, which took thousands of drivers by suprise and caused a 10 hour long traffic jam on one of the main highways. Some electric car owners where running low, but to my knowledge they all made it out without getting stranded.

Being prepared is a cultural aspect of winter driving and avoids most problems independent of the energy source used by the car. One advatage of electric cars is their ability to keep warm for hours without expelling any co2, wich have caused some horrible tragedies where people have been poisened due to the fact that the car has been patrly snowed in, trapping the exhaust.

Well Virginia ain't Norway. This happens a couple times a decade. People don't tend to prepare that well for shit that happens a couple times a decade.

Here at least they don't. Maybe in Norway.

The article is worse than random anecdotes. It had zero examples of an EV that had issues due to the incident.

100% FUD.

It would be fine. You can keep the temp at like 60 degrees for 8-10 hours, if you aren’t moving.

> It is much easier to rehabilitate a disabled ICE vehicle. Rescuers can deliver gallons of gas in convenient jugs; gas stations are still far more numerous than EV charging stations; and ICE car batteries can be jump-started in minutes.

I think this is the only useful point in the article.

If they were all electric though, imagine the charging stations once people get going. You can fill a tank of gas in a minute... you can't charge a car that fast.

It takes about 3-5 minutes to fill a gas tank, about 20 minutes to Fast DC charge an EV to 60-70% from 0% SOC.

Wait, how does that work when the cars are stranded along 100 miles of highway in the snow?

They Fast DC charge this line of stranded vehicles 100 miles long from what, exactly?

You get towed today if you drain the battery to 0. What the future looks like (they bring a diesel generator on a flat bed to provide each car enough charge to get to a charger?), I don’t know.

It's a queue. A dequeue I guess, they can do it on both ends.

You've gotta tow 100 miles worth of vehicles with dead batteries vs. someone comes along the queue with a gas can and it's all good, you don't see any difference there?

I see it as a rare, manageable problem.

Cool. Just don't ever fucking complain to me about climate change ever again in your life, deal?

The Rivian can be charged by towing it, at least that was the case in their prototype car shown off in Long Way Up (Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's Apple TV show where they (and their support crew) took 2 electric motorbikes up South and Central America)

This seems like a good idea. There are not enough EV's on the road yet to justify the cost of such a charging truck, so perhaps it needs to be subsidized by the government, similar to chargers, in order to be able to deal with powerless EV's stuck on a highway. I'd also like to see compact gasoline generators or spare battery packs that could be used to get 10-15 miles of range and stored in a trunk or on a rear deck.

Not all electric cars on the market have (1) heat pumps or (2) liquid temperature management for batteries.

Some people were stuck for over twice that long.

Amn EV can keep that temperature for much longer, 2 whole days or more.

Okay! Let's stop ev transition then!

Or we continue to do that ev transition thing but continue to do it with everyone were it is a no brainer first and on the way we solve all the upcoming problems?

And if we continue burning fossil fuels it might never be cold enough for snowstorms any more, problem solved! /S

Who the fuck is this guy writing that stupid ass article... How about you solve the problem of terrible American driving, and lack of winter tyre regulations. Hah, he takes Norway as an example, the country where you have to learn ice driving conditions to get your license..

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