EV in a hurricane evacuation

[DevSecOps]

If I always need to be prepared for a 40 miles drive, I won't arrive home with 10% soc... Instead of keeping another car for this reason.

And just 3 weeks ago the forum was up in arms over me saying that I charge the car to 90% every night due to me not needing to worry about where I need to go and if I have the charge to get there. I was told that I should let it get to 20% before recharging, and now I'm told logic would say otherwise...

Gotta love this place!

My point, and the facts are, that an EV will take longer to refuel, end of story. If you need to get somewhere quickly in an emergency an ICE vehicle could be a safer bet. I can take a 5 gallon fuel container from my garage, pour it into my ICE vehicle and get 125 miles within 2 minutes. There's no doing that with EVs. Someone who lives in a flood prone mountainous area might be safer with an offroad ICE vehicle than an MME. Everyone has different circumstances in life and sometimes ICE is just better. Someone did a lightning towing test with a horse trailer and I think they got 75 miles from full to empty. If you need to evacuate your livestock or tow a fifth wheel you might not get far.

I just don't like absolutes in many cases, this being one of them. I'm not agreeing with the weather station, but I'm also not in agreement that EVs are just as good as ICE in all emergency circumstances.

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[daverp]

Errrr. If I have a plug-in hybrid, does that mean I get to wait in both lines….

jes sayin. Stay safe, Floridians.

maybe, many of the plugin hybrids just support just J1772 not CCS, so you'll have an even more limited selection.

 

[Deleted User 981389]

It's really six of one, half a dozen of the other, plan accordingly.

 

[Valkyrja]

Agreed, it comes down to planning. I lived in hurricane zones (and went through way too many of them), and there are a lot of challenges with an ICE vehicle. There are challenges with any vehicle if you do not do any planning at all.

After my first one I made sure that as soon as hurricane season started that I would keep my gas tank full as much as possible and keep an eye on the predictions.

Be smart, be safe. A little bit of prep work can save you hours of frustration.

 

[Deleted User 981389]

Someone did a lightning towing test with a horse trailer and I think they got 75 miles from full to empty. If you need to evacuate your livestock or tow a fifth wheel you might not get far.

I was recently at an all EV car show, the owner of an F150 lightning was boasting about his great range while towing a camper. 160 miles! well okay but that was all flat terrain, the camper was a small 5k lb tear drop which I guess is still a camper. He was also adamant that weight had no effect on his range and it was all about the aero. "I can tow 10,000 lbs and the range would still be the same if it was in the truck bed", "going down hills replaces all the power used to get up the hill" .... I had to walk away.

I'm fairly sure this guy would take is EV to evacuate

 

[ctenidae]

"I can tow 10,000 lbs and the range would still be the same if it was in the truck bed", "going down hills replaces all the power used to get up the hill" .... I had to walk away.

I'm fairly sure this guy would take is EV to evacuate

He's going to hate it when the laws of physics catch up with him...

 

[Logal727]

Yeah I’ve got our MME or the wife’s Ioniq hybrid which gets 55mpg in case we need to go really far

 

[New2EV]

The weather channel just did a piece on the issues with EVs for anyone evacuating hurricane Ian. If you get stuck in traffic or end up in a charging dead zone an EV could be a huge liability. For instance a few years ago tens of thousands of people evacuated towards Atlanta from the Tampa area. With a high volume of people evacuating the spaces at charging stations will be very limited. Then you have the issue of potentially out of service charging stations when you attempt to return after an hurricane.

Definitely something to think about.

Last major evacuation came with numerous stories of ice cars running out of gas on or near the highway. Gas stations within 10 miles of I95 we're sold out all the way to Georgia. I'm on the East side of FL....I might head west if one hits on this side. Otherwise I'll stay put. No different EV vs ice. Except my generator can slowly refill my EV if needed.

 

[mkhuffman]

I have never evacuated for a hurricane even though I am near the coast of VA. We ride it out. One hurricane knocked out the power for 5 days. That really sucked because we didn't have a generator at the time. Of course we got one after that experience.

When we know a hurricane is coming, we fill up the ICE car and I will now top off the MME. If we decide to evacuate, we can take either depending on where we decide to go. Wherever we go in the MME has to have destination charging or I think I would rather take my chances finding gas. I cannot image how horrible charger congestion would be in that situation. 100x worse than trying to find gas.

 

[RockwallRick]

I’m luckily not in an evacuation zone as far as storm surge. We’re gonna hunker down.

So are we! My biggest concern would be the large Oak trees in my yard coming down on top of my house! Our vehicles will be gassed and charged but I don’t expect to be going anywhere for awhile!!

 

[Logal727]

So are we! My biggest concern would be the large Oak trees in my yard coming down on top of my house! Our vehicles will be gassed and charged but I don’t expect to be going anywhere for awhile!!

Luckily no trees around me, made sure of that when we got this place!

 

[ChasingCoral]

I think that in general there's issues with emergencies and EVs. Not necessarily or exclusively for a hurricane, but let's say that you return home from a vacation and your SOC is at 5% (10-20 miles). You get a call when you get home that your grandmother fell and needs help, but she's 40 miles away... you'll have to wait until the car can charge. I have an ICE vehicle just for these reasons and others (towing etc).

If you just returned from vacation and have two BEVs, wouldn’t the one that stayed home still have 100 miles of juice in it?

just sayin’

 

[ChasingCoral]

I was recently at an all EV car show, the owner of an F150 lightning was boasting about his great range while towing a camper. 160 miles! well okay but that was all flat terrain, the camper was a small 5k lb tear drop which I guess is still a camper. He was also adamant that weight had no effect on his range and it was all about the aero. "I can tow 10,000 lbs and the range would still be the same if it was in the truck bed", "going down hills replaces all the power used to get up the hill" .... I had to walk away.

I'm fairly sure this guy would take is EV to evacuate

Sorry to break in with real data but that Lightning owner was pretty much right.

We have a Lightning (Lariat ER). Towing our 25’ long, 10’ tall travel trailer (not a teardrop) we get 160-170 miles on a full charge. On a recent trip from the DC area into WV, the first leg in the flats averaged 1.3 miles/kWh, the second over 4 Appalachian ridges, including over the Eastern Continental Divide was 1.2. The regeneration on downhills is awesome and almost makes up for uphill losses.

And yes, aero is far more important than weight in a trailer.

 

[dbsb3233]

If there's a possible evacuation-worthy storm coming, I'd just keep it charged to 100% every night.

 

[Anthropod]

I’ve unfortunately experienced several hurricanes here in NC over the last 20 years. If you don’t fill up when there is a hint you are screwed. Then when it lifts you get to see the ugliest part of humanity with people fighting when the gas trucks arrive so they can get gas for their generators.

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