Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t gringojay – An ice storm and accident stranded drivers in freezing conditions on the Virginia I-95 overnight on Monday. My question – what would have happened if they were all driving electric vehicles?
27-hour commute: Virginia officials pelted with questions after hundreds of drivers were stuck on I-95 overnight
Ryan W. MillerDoyle Rice USA TODAY
The winter storm blanketed several states in the mid-Atlantic and South on Monday, closing schools and causing power outages.
In Virginia, drivers were stranded in a 50-mile stretch of Interstate 95 near Fredericksburg overnight. Five deaths across three states were caused by the weather.
Ice and snow stranded hundreds of drivers on Interstate 95 in Virginia into Tuesday after a winter storm pounded several Eastern states and dumped more than a foot of snow in some places.
The storm brought havoc to roadways, left more than 300,000 without power in Virginia and Maryland and caused at least five deaths across three states.
No injuries or fatalities from the storm or the traffic backup were reported in Virginia.
Problems began Monday morning when a truck jackknifed on Interstate 95, the main north-south highway along the East Coast, triggering a swift chain reaction as other vehicles lost control, state police said.
On a roughly 50-mile stretch of I-95 near Fredericksburg, drivers were stuck in their cars overnight while ice blanketed the freeway. The Virginia Department of Transportation tweeted Tuesday that the stretch of the interstate remained closed.
…
Josh Lederman, a reporter with NBC News, tweeted that he was stuck in his car overnight and many motorists turned off their cars to conserve gas.
“People (myself included) are taking exercise breaks outside their cars, walking their dogs on the interstate. I’ve been putting snow in his bowl and letting it melt into water,” he tweeted, detailing the ordeal.
Sen. Kaine finally arrived in Washington Tuesday afternoon, some 27 hours after his journey began.
…
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/01/04/winter-storm-power-outages-interstate-95-virginia/9087146002/
Drivers survived the Monday traffic jam by periodically running their engines to stay warm. When the traffic finally started moving again, most vehicles had enough gasoline to finish their journeys.
President Biden is pushing everyone to switch to electric vehicles, as part of his Net Zero plan. But EV batteries suffer severe performance drops in freezing conditions, and are more likely than gasoline engines to fail completely in severe conditions. Even if the EV batteries don’t freeze, an EV battery contains nowhere near as much energy as a tank of gas, so the safety margin is a lot thinner, for people stranded in severe weather who are using the stored energy of their vehicle to stay warm.
In my opinion, if everyone stuck on the I-95 had been driving an EV, the I-95 ice storm traffic jam could have become a mass casualty event.
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There will have been cautious people like me who, for long journeys or in winter, either leaves home with a full tank or never goes less than half full. Once bitten twice shy as they say. So if some others caught in this situation runs out of fuel it wouldn’t be beyond man’s ingenuity to get some fuel from an full tank to an empty one. It would be impossible to get electrons from one battery to another.
With old style diesel engines, pre-HDI Peugeot XD2 for example, someone with some cooking oil in the boot could use that in an emergency.
Getting electrons from one battery to another isn’t technically impossible, however at present it is practically impossible as there are on EV’s on the road that have the circuitry needed to make this happen.
That is, all EVs have circuits that allow their batteries to be charged. There are no EVs on the road that have the circuitry needed to take the electrons in the battery and make them available to an outside load.
This also makes the claims that EV batteries can be used as grid support total nonsense.
cooking oil is totally useless at low temps.
Anyone who has ever used it would tell you that!
Run!! And call the fire department……
Chrysler aims to be all electric by 2028 – ABC News (go.com)
Yep, I really believe that Chrysler marketing managers thinks there will be no worldwide ICE auto demand after the next five years. Draw your own conclusions.
What the Chrysler marketing managers believe is that if they don’t pander to the current regime with these pronouncements, Chrysler won’t be eligible for the next auto industry bailout when the oncoming major recession hits hard in summer or fall 2022.
Bingo and the bailout might come ahead of the next recession.
If that’s the case, they didn’t learn anything after Xiden failed to deliver the promised goodies for their supporting government EV policies. The BBB failed in Congress and the future doesn’t look bright for additional Leftist spend-fests. While I’m not a Crony Capitalist, I wouldn’t bet on Let’s Go Brandon being able to spearhead any big new initiatives.
The BBB is being split into a series of smaller stimulus bills which the Dems will be introducing starting in February or March 2022. The current rumor is that Mitch McConnell has now come on board with this latest spending extravaganza.
Chrysler aims to be all electric by 2028
“The company said Wednesday that it will launch its first electric vehicle by 2025”.
And just 3 years later they will be all electric? I wonder what happens to those plans when their total sales of EVs in 2026 are just 3% of their total 2024 sales?
The average EV buyer today has an annual income of $100,000 and up. Can you run a major car company on that demographic? Yes sales will be good within 25 miles of DC. Sales figures for Minnesota will be in the 5 figures. Alaska a mere fraction of that 🙂
Then again, maybe “aims for” just means for publicity only, with no one really expecting it to happen.
Years ago, when I was assigned to the Washington DC area, I always took the DC Metro into town. The other option was to spend three hours a day stuck in a traffic jam on the Beltway.
Sure, the Metro may have been crowded. But after its own fashion, it worked. Sort of. Most of the time.
At what cost to taxpayers per mile?
If I may chime in from EV country nr 1 in the world Norway, we had a similar situation a few weeks ago on a motorway in the south of the country. Luckily nobody perished but several EV’s had to be towed away when the road opened up again. It was closed for only a couple og hours. When you are on the way home with a not fully loaded battery and incidents happen you are just f*cked. In all honesty, there were also ICE cars that ran out of fuel, but at least you are sitting warm and comfy for as long as the fuel reaches. Best to have thermo overalls on board in cold conditions, no matter what kind of engine.
100% agree. I had the same thought reading the story. When the road opened the majority of drivers could drive away. Presumably some who ran our of fuel could be topped up on the road side by service trucks or jerry cans off they go. Now imagine half or all of those vehicles are electric. There is nowhere near enough tow trucks and heavy haulers to open up that road in weeks.
You mean electric tow trucks, right?
Mercedes-Benz VISION EQXX: The new benchmark of efficiency.
Top of the range A$400,000 AWD or cheaper RWD A$300,000 approximately estimated retail price.
Almost 80 million Americans exposed to weather….
Millions of Americans under winter weather alerts for storms, arctic blast – ABC News (go.com)
Hmm. I was hoping for more content, so here is some: Remember that this event was in Virginia, and it wasn’t that cold, so remember to always keep blankets in your car. Back to the EV issue: if it was real cold (15 F and down), you have a problem because heating the car is in the KW range and will suck the battery down pretty fast. Some EV manufacturers recognize this (like Volvo) and supply a small (3 gallon) petrol/ethanol heater. I expect this will be adopted by other manufacturers. It does make one wonder if adding propane/butane for an assist to the power (such as power tools do) might be a useful type of hybrid?
A parked Tesla running heat and entertainment in 15deg temps use 2kw/hr so even the small 50kw model 3 would last a max 25 hours. This would easily be extended by shutting down all but heat, lowering cabin temp or only using seat heaters which would last much much longer. So no it would not be a mass casualty event, that’s ridiculous. I’d rather have the EV sipping electrons using seat heaters watching Netflix while everyone else shuts off their cars every 30 mins to save gas while freezing and bored.
Totally agree that the “mass casualty” statement is ridiculous, but your max 25 hours does assume a full charge and a new car (non-degraded battery). That’s ok, but an ICE car with a full 14 gallon tank could also idle for about 25 hours “sipping” gasoline and running an entertainment unit 🙂 My point is that we should compare EVs, Hybrids, and ICE dispassionately as each option has its place (though I realize you were responding to a rather inflammatory article)
Something like this I imagine
https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/prairie-tesla-owners-battle-loss-of-heat-amid-extreme-cold-weather-after-software-update-1.5729102
Brad was upset and decided to end it all …..
Brad was sick of the World, of Covid-19, Chinese belligerence, global warming, species extinction, racial tension and all the rest of the disturbing stories that occupy the media headlines.
Brad drove his car into his garage at home, carefully sealed up around the windows and doorways of his garage, selected his favourite radio station and left his car at a slow idle.
Two days later, his neighbour realising she had seen no sign of Brad for a while, peered thru the garage window to see Brad at the wheel of his car.Immediately she phoned emergency services.Police, firies and the ambulance arrived promptly.
After pulling Brad from his car and giving him a sip of water, he seemed as good as gold.
Brad drives a Tesla. It now has a flat battery.
He also votes Green.
I read over 50 vehicles abandoned. I’m sure most were folks “running on fumes” (<1/8 tank).
I read it takes around 5 kW to heat a vehicle to a 40 deg F interior/exterior differential. With a 60kWh battery that would be 12 hrs if you had a full charge, 6 hrs at half charge. If you have appropriate clothing you could probably make do with 3kW of heating and 50 deg F interior. If you were caught at 25% charge then your fate would be similar to the ICE drivers running on fumes.
But it is rather easy for a cautious ICE vehicle driver with a low tank to pull off and take five to top off the tank when the weather starts looking dodgy, something that is not as convenient to do with an EV on low charge.
And here comes another one!!
Always handy to store some tea lights and a lighter in your glove box.
And if you run out of gas?
I started my neighbours car which would barely turn over at -16 with a li-on battery about the size of my hand on the first go. I had charged it sometime in October and stored it in my truck which sits outside. It showed 65% power at -16 still.
Liiving in a northern climate, ice or battery, I would have got my winter kit out of the back lit a candle or used the hand warmers,and after it thawed out put on the ski pants, felt paks etc.
My EV uses 1% charge to cool the cabin down on a 35C day over 30 minutes, during our heat wave, and less once cooled or warmed up. That means standing still I have 50+ hours of heating from a full battery. Should be enough time.
Who needs EVs or hybrids? Paddy Lowe’s product, https://www.gasworld.com/why-synthetic-petroleum-could-be-key-to-decarbonisation/2020988.article, removes as much CO2 from the air in production as it puts back in combustion – true cyclical, ‘zero-carbon’ stuff. An ex-colleague of mine, a RAF test pilot, flew a light aircraft fuelled by this AVGAS-equivalent in an unmodified light aircraft and could not find a difference to his morning flight, in the same aircraft, powered by nasty fossil-AVGAS. Scaled-up, this has to be the way ahead.
Question: Were none of the stranded people driving an EV?
If there were some, why not find a few and interview them about the experience?
If not, that’s just an indication of the mountain to be climbed to convince cold-climate drivers to switch to EV’s
I assume that the author has never used an EV on an extended basis. If I am having to wait in my car in cold weather I just leave it switched on with the heater on. The power required to keep the car warm is miniscule compared with the power to drive it down the road.
EVs may have their issues (charging if you live in a 3rd floor flat for example) but this isn’t one of them.
bjorn nyland did a video of a 2021 Tesla model 3 to see how long you could keep the heat in with a full battery in the middle of a Norwegian winter. I think it made it something like 60+ hours. So, no mass casualty event.
Ps, cars run out of gas faster than that.