Electric vehicle mandate in California

Reisender wrote:

ShinerBock wrote:
This kind of leads to another question. If a wildfire, tornado, or other natural disaster knocks out power in a region for days. How do you recharge your vehicle to escape? With my ICE vehicle, I just go the fuel station and get about 10 gallons of gas/diesel just in case (which I have needed on a few occasions). What do BEV owners do? A lot of people recharging right before a disaster would put a lot of strain on the regional power supply. What do you do if your only escape vehicle isn't recharged?

Also, if the trucks delivering relief supplies are electric, then how do they recharge? I know it took weeks for the electricity to come back to the area after the the last major hurricane in Rockport.

Its a good question and various countries are approaching it from a multi pronged approach. Some northern European countries are analyzing key emergency route importance and using a diesel backup approach to existing fast charge stations. Its a little easier there as in many cases fast chargers are already co-located with large truck stops or commercial gas stations. So easier to integrate backup systems. This pic happens to show a Tesla Supercharger site co-located with a truck stop but non Tesla DC fast charge centres are commonly co located at rest stops like this all over Europe.



Other approaches include portable easily deployable DCFC units integrated into a large diesel generator and fuel bowser. Deploy-able on short term for emergency ops. This is an experimental unit in Australia but you get the idea.

Although less common in the US, co-locating charging facilities with existing gas stations is getting common place including in Canada. This is a shell station in Quebec. Its not clear if this one has a backup system as I found conflicting info on wether it does or doesn't. You get the idea.



As far as the other posters concern about everyone needing a portable generator to charge there cars, that is simply not ever going to happen and would be a completely irrational approach. EV's just don't need that much power for daily commutes or use. 6-8 KW daily for the most part covers the vast majority of commuters requirements. Air conditioning and stove use uses more than that. BC hydro estimates that if every personal gas vehicle was magically converted to electric tomorrow the additional load would be around 19 percent. Power conservation and technological improvements over the next two decades will conserve at least that amount in many cases. The vast majority of people who drive an Ev still just plug into a 120 volt household outlet for all their charging needs. In our case the car timers just charge the car in the middle of the night. Here our car is plugged into our christmas light soffett plug.



In some locations non grid connected stations with solar storage capacity are starting to show up as the storage technology develops. Although this is a small unit with small storage this approach is expected to be scalable for minimimum infrastructure expense.



This kind of thing is becoming common in one of the places where we live. In some places this kind of infrastructure is now being integrated with storage facilities on site that can be used for grid backup as well as stand alone ops.



Things are not static. The technology will evolve. The companies that say it can't be done will be marginalized and fall to the wayside. Boeing is full of former SpaceX engineers who pounded the table and told Elon Musk that rockets could not be reused let alone landed on a ship. LOL. :)

Heres a fun video from SpaceX on what a can do attitude can do. And yes I know Americans generally hate this guy (and especially RV netters :) ) but for many he brings a lot to the table.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX1Y2JMK6g8

All those words and it still didn't answer my question you quoted.....


I am not sure what SpaceX has to do with this, but I can tell you that one of the reasons why Elon can do, is because he lobbied to keep emissions out of the commercial space act which in turn kept his cost low. If he had to use the same low emissions fuel that NASA uses, he would not be able to do what he is doing.

Lastly, I was just apart of the the DOE Vehicles technologies Annual Merit Review where multiple global research institutions, universities, and vehicle manufacturers present their research status on projects the DOE has funded. It is funny that none of them painted such a rosy picture as you guys are stating. And these are actual scientist and manufacturers( even the Euro ones) who have been working in these fields for decades. Many pointed to the exact same barriers that I have saying here and that you guys want to pretend doesn't exist.

The one electrification project that does show promise is the hybrid Peterbilt/Cummins truck with a ISB 4.5L diesel engine pushing a 130kw generator that either charges the batteries and/or supplies power the the electric motor. On its test loops from Indianapolis,IN to San Antonia, TX(1,150 miles), it increased fuel efficiency over 65% compared to a conventional engine doing the same route.

If you want to read more of the research presentations you can pull the zip files here. Fair warning, it is a lot of data and may not be what you want to hear.... LINK