Hacker News Reader

Comment by AustinDev | Hacker News Reader

I grew up where we would have a massive hurricane every few years that would knock out power for 2 weeks at a time minimum. I would never want an electric vehicle in this situation because you'd be completely stranded in an emergency. We'd keep ~100 gallons of gasoline in a caddy for generators and cars to use during these outages and it was ideal.

I'd pay a premium for a Plug-in Hybrid especially if I can use the motor as a generator for my house.

View on HN

> we keep ... gasoline ... for generators Well, can't you charge your EV with a generator ?

Picked a random generator off home depot: https://www.homedepot.com/p/DEWALT-8000-Watt-Electric-Start-...

11 hours runtime at 4kW == 44kWh capacity. 44/7.5 gallon tank == 5.8 kWh per gallon. Lets say your EV has average efficiency of 3.5 miles per kWh, so that’s about 20 mpg off the generator. Apply a 13% efficiency loss while charging (https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a36062942/evs-explaine...) and it reduces to 18mpg. Better than a lot of cars still on the road.

In a crisis, an ev is probably a pretty big waste of a generator, you need to keep your fridge and freezer on for literally as long as possible.

Yep, freezer and fridge get the power and the car is mostly used to get more gasoline and pickup water from the national guard.

Wouldn't a decent ev be able to keep a fridge and freezer going for weeks and have plenty left for short trips?

I thought the ev issue was for those who wish to evacuate long distances without having to recharge to reach the destination.

That's a fair point however if you needed to go anywhere to fetch supplies anyone left at home wouldn't have power until you return. Gasoline just stores so much more energy than modern batteries and it can be pumped from the station without power I think it's more durable in an emergency.

Say you had to live in Kyiv for whatever reason right now. With the rolling outages would you rather have a plug-in hybrid or an EV?

If I'm just bopping around town, my EV seems to keep a charge for a remarkably long time. Regenerative braking is quite remarkable while idling consumes quite a bit of gasoline. The EV might be able to hold its charge completely through the disaster if you're only going out locally to get water, food and gas.

Newer cars with auto-stop engines might make the comparison a lot farier for the ICE, though.

Why can't you just replace the gas with batteries or use it in a generator?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com