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Comment by MisterBastahrd | Hacker News Reader

I won't buy a car that I can't adequately evacuate in. This means 700 miles with a 10 minute stop for gas / restroom.

I don't care about personal emergencies. I care about local emergencies. It only sounds unreasonable until you've had to do it multiple times.

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My family had to evacuate from Houston a few times from hurricanes in my childhood. Every time involved a shit ton of idiling in high heat. Every time saw tons of cars stranded from no gas, every time saw rural gas stations along the highway close from being out of gas. Every time we barely made it.

Those trips were Houston to San Antonio. A bit under 200mi. It took over 12 hours. Loads of modern EVs would have made that trip in one charge, slowly crawling along the whole way, without an issue. My EV can idle for hours without using much range. My ICE chugs gas sitting there doing nothing but running the AC.

If you need to evacuate 1000km as fast as possible without stopping, bring water and food and be prepared to die in a massive traffic jam. Or in the post apocalyptique world that will follow.

Or maybe you can stop a few more minutes when it happens?

Did you ever consider that the reason I would prefer a gas engine over electric is because I can quickly refuel a gas tank to be full and be on my way? You aren't doing that when there are lines down the road at each station along the route and you're in an electric car. You're just stranded, because if these are EVs, they will either take forever to charge or you're going to make a dozen supercharger stops that will literally eat up HOURS of your time.

Your gas station has electric pumps. Doesn't take hours to fast charge.

It does when everyone is waiting on "electric pumps" because they've switched to vehicles which are far more inefficient on average at refueling. Try thinking about the situation instead of just coming up with a dumb rebuttal that doesn't make even a tangential amount of sense.

Since, we're just making stuff up and lambasting someone else for doing it. Think about this...If everyone has switched to electric cars. Doesn't it stand to reason that everyone would have switched to electric chargers or by then the inefficiency of charging would be gone?

If charging queues are a worry, gas stations queues and shortages are also a problem.

I understand your worries but I am not sure it’s a great excuse to keep driving ICE cars.

Where do you live that you've had to do multiple 700 mile evacuations?

Hurricaneland. Unless you are SUUUUUUUPER on point with booking a room well in advance at the far edges of the state, you are definitely driving out of it and likely a good bit away. I've had friends who needed to drive to Tennessee from New Orleans, and when the last major storm that hit the NOLA area, my parents asked me to check hotels in Dallas but they were all booked.

Probably hurricane strike zone. It's not weird to travel that far to get out of the way of a hurricane. Usually because that's when lodging becomes available. I did it every few years as a kid.

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