EVs - Another Potential Drawback?

[Robert Wiles]

The recent bad weather in the north, with stories of vehicles stuck for many hours on snow bound roads made me think about the promised land of EVs. Think about a time in the not too distant future when, say, 80% of cars on the road are electric. Now, imagine a severe weather episode that leads to main routes becoming blocked. Many of the occupants of said EVs will likely use the contents of their batteries for heating, which would cause them to run out of watts in a few hours at best. So, when the weather subsides and the snow ploughs/gritters have done their job, we now have a huge snake of dead EVs all of which will require recovery by guess what? - old school diesel powered recovery vehicles. That could take a while. It does make me wonder whether this headlong rush towards EVs has been properly thought through...

 

[t-tony]

Also a few bits in the news regarding EVs doing “Updates”. They do them when they need to and you are stuffed until it is done and ready to go.

Tony.

 

[Pond]

Ah but there lies a greater problem....with the increase in EVs so (according to the Gov, media, scientists) will there be a decrease in 'global warming', which will make the Winters harsher and colder. Luckily the diesel recovery trucks should offset that a bit.
Oil will be our saviour after all. I don't have any ties to the Saudis BTW!

 

[Ianmc]

We are still coming out of an Ice Age; too much short term thinking (and vested interests) in play IMO. The propaganda is all one sided at present.

 

[mmm-five]

What’s the comparison of running an ICE engine (petrol) vs ICE engine (diesel) vs EV, purely for keeping occupants warm?

Relatively easy to work out for an EV is you say it’s a 0.5kwh heater (enough for a relatively small enclosed space) and the car has 50kw battery…so could possibly do 100 hours if fully charged.

ICE vehicles can use 1-2 litres per hour at idle, so an average car with a 55L tank could do 27.5-55 hours on a full tank.

I’d probably be frozen within 4 hours in the Z4MC though, as it would be over half empty just getting to the snow fun