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What's good in electric cars? If a large power plant is destroyed how are you going to charge your electric car to escape?
by codedokode 2mo ago
What's good in electric cars? If a large power plant is destroyed how are you going to charge your electric car to escape?
- jdlshore 2mo agoIt’s always charged. You plug it in when you get home and it’s ready to go when you leave.
- vrganj 2mo agoYou can have solar panels and batteries right at home. You can't have an oil rig at home.
- thelastgallon 2mo ago[flagged]
- mschuster91 2mo ago> And your gasoline pump works perfectly fine without power? Most decent emergency / contingency plans will have the fire department, police or whatever local group show up at one or two designated gas stations to provide power, or require these stations to have on-site emergency power.
- vel0city 2mo agoAs someone who has actually lived through multiple major catastrophes where fuel couldn't get delivered for days and electricity was out for days, when the pumps stop working there is no gas. Don't assume the gasoline the police and fire department have will be there for you. It's there for the first responders. They don't have infinite supply. Their supply is extra expensive to handle compared to when things were working. You've now got many thousands of families all trying to get to the two or three operating fuel stations...trust me they're not open to the public! When you're out of gas, you're out of gas. Meanwhile, those with solar panels not reliant on grid-tie, they can continue to charge their vehicles.
- thelastgallon 2mo agoIf your refinery is taken out, it might take years to rebuild it.
- ben_w 2mo agoIf it was that easy, Ukraine would have already brought Russia to its knees. Because the Russian government is still telling themselves they can win and don't even bother trying to negotiate with Ukraine but instead the USA, this must not be the case.
- codedokode 2mo agoNot years.
- M95D 2mo agoYears in US. Not years in China, Russia, elsewhere.
- mirmor23 2mo ago> Most decent emergency / contingency plans will have the fire department, police or whatever local group show up at one or two designated gas stations to provide power, or require these stations to have on-site emergency power. this is just nonsense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou... while traveling i got caught up in this. no restaurants, no credit cards working, no grocery stores, no cell connection, no navigation with phone, no gas station. the goddam list goes on. fortunately this was less than 16 hours.
- codedokode 2mo agoIf you used cash as a reasonable person you would not even notice that cards aren't working.
- soco 2mo agoHow many shops will be open without power? No till, no light, no refrigerator... not sure how much will help you having cash, beyond a couple of very basic needs - I can't even tell which, nor can you, it's gonna be an adventure either way.
- codedokode 2mo agoBread doesn't need a refrigerator and you can sell it directly from a truck.
- ben_w 2mo agoBread needs power to get made, and with no electricity the gas pumps that no longer work are not filling up any delivery trucks either. Fortunately PV and wind and local batteries are getting deployed everywhere fast and electric trucks are starting to become a thing. Some places might even have enough for basic logistics in a war that cuts out their oil supply like wars tend to because they're obvious weak points.
- hombre_fatal 2mo ago
- codedokode 2mo agoGasoline is much easier to store (you can keep a reserve in your cellar) and much easier to carry and trade than electricity.
- oytis 2mo agoAfrican continent is probably the last place in the world where this is relevant, and they are on track to fix it.
- nemomarx 2mo agoDo you keep gasoline in your cellar? my understanding is that it goes bad relatively fast, so be careful to keep cycling it yearly at least.
- FpUser 2mo agoIt did last 3 years in my lawnmower. Well it is gone now since I switched it to electric.
- KellyCriterion 2mo agoYou can store it but not very long, thats btw one reason why its not useful for private people to participate in wholesale/corp market: Even if you would get a small fraction discount for ordering large amount, you cant store that large amount long enough in your basement before it gets unusable (esp. Diesel).
- ben_w 2mo agoHuh, I knew petrol was bad, but I thought diesel was fine to store at home? Not that I ever have, the brief period when I had use of a car I was living in a 38 m^2 (or so) flat.
- wyre 2mo agoWhat are you afraid of happening? This is such a perverse and anxious fear imo
- mschuster91 2mo agoA reasonable scenario might be a cyberattack taking down large portions of the grid for a prolonged time. It's not impossible to achieve something like that, Stuxnet proved the concept of corrupting PLCs driving powerplants ages ago. Alternatively, even outside a cyberwar scenario, bad weather has been shown to take down power grids for entire regions for days, sometimes weeks.
- vel0city 2mo agoIf they've taken down large portions of the grid for a prolonged period of time you're also not going to have much gasoline left. > bad weather has been shown to take down power grids for entire regions for days, sometimes weeks Once again, as someone who actually lived through those scenarios multiple times, when the gas pumps go down you're usually shit outta luck on getting gas. When the grid goes down for days, the gas you have in your gas car + any random fuel tanks you have in your garage is what you have. Don't expect anything else unless you plan to take it at gunpoint.
- jameshart 2mo agoMeanwhile the oil supply system is immune to outside threats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_a... https://shippingtelegraph.com/shipping-news/adnoc-reports-15-vessels-attacked-while-transiting-hormuz/ https://shippingtelegraph.com/shipping-news/adnoc-reports-15... https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/08/1168121 https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/08/1168121
- SideburnsOfDoom 2mo agoIf you're talking about "outside threats to oil supply" then this has to be a major and current example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_Russian_fuel_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_Russian_fuel... We can find many examples of "Russian oil refinery damaged by Ukrainian drone strike" e.g. today https://www.kyivpost.com/post/82326 https://www.kyivpost.com/post/82326 > repairs potentially taking up to six months. The strike adds to Kyiv’s escalating campaign against Russia’s oil industry and a growing fuel crunch across the country. But search again tomorrow and there will be new examples. Refineries and other oil infrastructure are large, located in well-known fixed locations and are highly flammable. This campaign demonstrates what a weak spot they are for a petrostate.
- cevn 2mo agoAre u serious? If ur oil refinery is destroyed how are you going to pump oil to your house?
- codedokode 2mo agoYou can buy it on a black market unlike electricity.
- thelastgallon 2mo agoYes, buy crude on the black market and build your own refinery. Or you can run your own DIY fracking rig in your backyard. There must be some yt videos.
- gspr 2mo agoAre you suggesting we plan our global energy infrastructure based on attributes like "how well it fares in a post-apocalyptic barter economy"?
- codedokode 2mo agoAre you thinking that there are no wars and power plants do not get destroyed? If you live in a non-nuclear country the chances are non-zero and it is not smart to depend on large, centralized, easy to destroy power plants. It actually dumb to build those large plants instead of decentralized smaller plants. For example, a president of a certain country threatened to make a "power plant day" in another certain country.
- Sabinus 2mo agoWhy are power plants considered centralised but the extraction, transport and refining of oil isn't? With the renewable power revolution, do you think solar panels and batteries are going to be more or less centralised than oil extraction, transport and refining? Are you familiar with how easy it is to repair the electrical grid after damage, compared to what happens to oil wells whose operations are stopped?
- mschuster91 2mo ago> If a large power plant is destroyed how are you going to charge your electric car to escape? Solar panels and home battery storage. This is also going to seriously screw over electrical grid and especially powerplant operators... residential will, at least in suburban and rural areas, not need a grid any more except during prolonged phases of low solar yield.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- jmuguy 2mo agoI hope its strictly an American fantasy to think you're driving out of anywhere when something like that happens. Buy a bicycle.
- soco 2mo agoI know I have a problem with "suspension of disbelief" but I find it always weird in those dystopian movies where they all drive monster trucks on an apparently endless supply of scavenged fuel and spare parts. But I'm positive exactly this Hollywood spirit is what fuels (pun intended) most of those hyper-optimistic answers.
- jmuguy 2mo agoI love disaster movies and they ocassionally lean into the idea of traffic being kind of bad in the event of a disaster. Deep Impact had a protagonist escaping biblical level tsunamis on a dirt bike.
- ForHackernews 2mo agohttps://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoBikesInTheApocalypse https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoBikesInTheApoc...
- ButlerianJihad 2mo agoIn Phoenix we all live in the shadow of the Palo Verde nuclear generation plant. And once on the radio I heard some pundits discussing contingencies if PV should glitch out and have a life-threatening disaster. And they matter-of-factly said, "you're gonna be walking." And that would be the truth; in a full-scale evacuation of a city like Phoenix, the freeways are not built to accommodate traffic like that, and yours truly has no car anyway, so I would be packing light and walking in the opposite direction, and/or ignoring the orders, to meet whatever fate awaits. But I bet there would be a lot of bicycle and vehicle theft going on, in such an event.
- skinfaxi 2mo agoFollowing Hurricane Sandy, many were left without power and ultimately even gas was strictly rationed. So it's not out of the ordinary to imagine an event like that happening. https://www.nj.com/news/2012/11/sandy_gas_ration_12_counties.html https://www.nj.com/news/2012/11/sandy_gas_ration_12_counties...
- thelastgallon 2mo agoThere is no need of large powerplants. Thats the legacy grid, only to make Warren Buffet rich. New grid (that needs to be built) will have solar panels, BESS + EVs for storage, either off-grid or a small community grid. The new grid is distributed and indestructible.
- patmorgan23 2mo agoHow are you gonna use the electric gas pump in that scenario? The electric car guy just needs a few solar panels.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- SideburnsOfDoom 2mo agoWhat's good in Gasoline cars? If a refinery is destroyed how are you going to fuel your gasoline car to escape? It's not like you can charge it from a standard wall outlet or rooftop solar like a regular EV. * Ask the people in Crimea how they are dealing with this exact scenario. * Petroleum refineries are large, fixed, and highly flammable by nature.