The massive Florida blackout on Tuesday has quieted some of the electric car advocates and the 874 or so owners of EVs in the state. The Florida blackout that affected between 1 and 3 million people in the southern regions, started at an electrical substation west of Miami.
A fire at the substation triggered a domino-like regional collapse of the grid including the automated shutdown of two nuclear reactors. Had this been an actual emergency, as they say, such as a prolonged blackout and a breach of the nuclear reactors, the electric car owners, with depleted batteries would have had to find other means to flee the emergency situation rather than relying on their grid dependent vehicles.
And, if another hurricane like Hurricane Andrew in 1992 were to strike the same scenario would be upon many Floridians with electric cars. Besides dealing with wide spread electrical outages the car owners would also need to deal with escape from the category 5 winds that climbed up to 175 mph and killed 65 people.
With grid dependency, we become slaves to the aging electrical infrastructure and the whims of Mother Nature. The Northeast Blackout of 2003 that affected 50 million people in the U. S. and Canada should have been a wakeup call.
Let me be clear that electric vehicles do have a place in our society as secondary cars or for primary vehicles when they are powered off-grid. But, in the post-911 and post-Katrina world that we live in, owning a grid-dependent car will not make sense for many folks in many regions. I’m sure a few diehards will fully disagree with this assessment, however.
It’s not that I disagree with your statement, it’s just that I feel there are options out there for those that do own electric cars yet don’t want to rely on the grid for their charging solutions. I was reading another post about this thing called the “LifePod” that is a 120sq.ft. building with solar panels on it apparently designed to provide a solar charge for EV’s and PHEV’s. Tesla is also poised to offer this “car port” looking thing that essentially does the same thing via solar power. I love hydrogen, but until all those issues get worked out with production and logistics, we have to do what we can. A small electric car like the Xebra from ZAP (www.zapworld.com) could easily be adapted to charge via solar AND grid. We just need to identify the issues and look to find solutions, thats all.
Like I said, I believe electric vehicles do have a future especially when supported by off-grid power. This would be ideal since this would truly make them zero emission vehicles. I think there will be room enough in the future for both hydrogen cars and electric vehicles (plus air cars, biofuel vehicles and others yet to be developed).