this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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For the blackout concerns: if you have solar panels, irrelevant, actually you'd be in a better place than with an ICE car. Also, if you have a garage, a fairly powerful generator cost peanuts compared to the price of a car, and some can run on gas cilinders and gasoline. Way safer to store gas cilinders than gas.
Long drives. Decades ago I drove with my ex and my in laws from Madrid to Brussels in one go. 2 of us taking turns.I swore to never do more than 800 Km in one go. We did it in a largish car, pretty comfortable. Yeah, no.
People conveniently forget that gas pumps are powered by electricity also. A person with solar panels and an ev is going to be in a much better situation in a large scale power outage than someone with a gas car.
I recall an ice storm where half the state was dark, and sure enough so were the gas stations. It was a fun conversation with my supervisor.
The majority of people who happen to be in cities aren't helped by your setup.
Ok, so they are fucked either way. The gas pumps will still not work in cities either.
My next car is going to have physical fucking knobs and buttons.
I'm not buying another car with a tablet to control the media and the climate, regardless of power source. If I have to buy a 10 year old rust bucket I will. I'm not going back to the tablet until there's literally no other option available.
There’s no reason to expect this will be any different with EVs. There are already companies claiming better recycling rates, but they can’t scale up yet because there are not enough retired EVs
Most places with solar panels hooked up to the grid, you can't use the power from them when the grid is down. Safety thing so you aren't back feeding into the grid.
I have 25 and 23 year old cars. Pretty much the only thing that would cause me to get rid of them would be a crash or the frame rusting out.
I've replaced motors and rebuilt trans on each of them respectively. And I'll continue doing that. Parts are still easily accessible and when they aren't anymore, pretty much everything is metal and a machine shop can fab something up.
...yeah, five hundred miles is a pretty good run, especially with slow speed limits...
...stateside i'm usually spent after twelve hours solo, which will carry you about a thousand miles, although my wife will power through 1250 miles driving in shifts (but that makes for an exhausting day)...