Not all places are fully fossil fuel dependent for electricity generation. Nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind generate significant amounts of electricity in many areas.
Also, even other fossil fuels may have advantages over petroleum, where reducing demand leading to lower prices can reduce revenue to petro states that tend to be foreign policy and national security problems.
Our family and several friends have all switched to EVs and we are all running off of our own rooftop solar panels. Very common in our area.
Of course it is a considerable up front investment which is not feasible for everyone. But in our case, absolutely made sense. I drive a lot daily as part of my job and was paying $500 per month just for gas. Not to mention vehicle maintenance on my previous ICE vehicle. Over this past year for my fabulous ID.4, I have not spent a dime. It came with 3 years of free charging at EA charging stations which I have used on long trips.
Wow. I don’t know a single person in real life that owns an EV. No one on my street has one, no one in my family, none of my friends. Maybe that why I’m having trouble thinking seriously thinking about buying one. I’ve never even seen one in person except occasionally in a parking lot. I do know people with solar panels - that is pretty common, but no EVs.
Every other house on my street has an EV. We are the only ones with solar though. One neighbor has two Teslas. That’s their entire car fleet.
Probably where you live. Where I am Teslas are now the single most common vehicle in the area. The majority of the households on my street drive an EV, mostly Teslas. They still don’t represent the majority of vehicles overall but are more common than any single other brand, EV or not. It’s kind of a running joke in the family when we’re at the mall or a large parking lot to count how many Teslas we pass just walking down the aisle of the parking lot.
I literally know dozens of people with EVs “in real life.”
I don’t know anyone personally with an EV, but occasionally you will see a Tesla around. It’s a novelty though. “Look! A Tesla!” Not like in the DC area where they are everywhere.
And I only know one person who has solar panels - a young mechanical engineer. He just got them this summer. They are not popular around us either.
I live in a semi rural area of CT. There are a LOT of EVs around. Many are Tesla but I think that’s only because until recently the options were more limited.
I think I personally know at least a dozen Tesla owners. Maybe more.
I know 2 Tesla owners. One house in our neighborhood has a VW EV in the driveway. I see a lot of EVs on the roads though.
Why so low? I never let my car get that low unless I am on a road trip. First rule of EVs is ABC, Always Be Charging. That must be a pain to live in an area with such unreliable power.
We get power outages with storms when trees fall on lines but the crews here are great and usually get us up and powered within the day. We did have a winter storm about 5-10 years ago that knocked us out for 36 hours but the neighbor’s tree fell across the lines and into our driveway so we weren’t driving anywhere anyway. The longest power outage I remember was years ago when a hurricane came through and we were out of power for a week or more. It was long before EVs. My Bolt has enough battery capacity that I could easily drive around town for a week on a single charge or drive to an area with power and charge up and maybe find a nice hotel with power to check into.
Why do you “think” that? What is your basis for saying that? It’s not at all theoretical and I know several folks who use EVs to power essentials during power outages.
Also as I mentioned upthread you can go completely off grid with an EV in a way that you will never be able to do with a gas powered vehicle unless you can drill your own well and refine your own petroleum. Making electricity is much easier for an individual whether it’s solar panels, micro-hydro, or wind.
It really sounds like you don’t have experience and are extrapolating your lack of knowledge and experience into internet opinions.
Just curious where do you live? You can tell us generally if you don’t want to say specifically, like I live near a major metro area in the Southeast and there are tons of EVs around here. All kinds. I parked next to another Bolt at the grocery store yesterday.
I’m wondering if maybe you are not recognizing some too? The Bolt, for example, does not scream EV like Teslas do. A lot of them now just look like regular cars.
We do a standard weekly run to visit DD. Charge vehicle to 80%. That day we made a few extra stops, and it was cold. I have no desire to stop 20 minutes to charge while running this particular loop. It does highlight the extra brain cycles needed to work with an EV.
Im in Central CA. We are the fore runners in power outages.
A family member uses a CPAP. Once we see the storm season beginning we plug an inverter into one of the ICE vehicle cigaret lighters and run a cable to the bedroom. If power goes out - the CPAP gets plugged into the extension cord. We intentionally turn off the propane generator at night. Both as a courtesy to neighbors and because it is is expensive to run. And we will not charge an EV on propane.
We had a solar system consultation. We can not simply go ‘off grid’. In order to do so we have to apply to have all power lines removed - a process that takes a minimum of two years. We do not have the option to install a solar system that does not feed back into the grid. Specifically asked if that company would just install something that let us only charge the car. Nope, no can do.
We have all the needed in-house expertise to hook up such a system under cover of darkness (ha). Just not worth the effort at this point.
Neither solar nor home backup battery (with or without wheels) requires going completely off grid.
We just charge at home. How much is your total cost to get to a full charge at home? I know you said it was cheaper at the supercharger, but I would think in a situation like that it might be worth it to just charge at home occasionally. We have Time Of Use rates, but sometimes will charge during peak rates just to have it done rather than try to wait for the cheaper rates. We have 4 cars charging when everyone is home (1 EV and 3 PHEVs) and although we have a dedicated level 2 charger and a trickle charge setup it can still be tricky playing musical cars with our one car garage, so sometimes we just eat the little bit extra on the electric bill.
That sounds really weird about the solar. I am not aware of any restrictions on home solar set ups in our area. Our house is just too shady. Maybe a different solar installer could help you set something up for the car if you wanted to pursue that some more.
We always charge at home. The situation was such that when we returned home the power was off - and remained off for 14 hours. I was not willing to charge the EV via the running propane fueled generator. I did go to the local - always available - supercharger station the next morning. If we were an all EV household I would have needed to do the charge before retiring for the night during the power outage.
Yes. I am aware of this. My point was that if I wanted to install a solar system and NOT connect/feed back to the grid it was not currently possible. I wanted just some batteries that would fuel the house/charge the EV during times when the conditions were right - such as running the A/C during the hottest part of the day. My vision was to turn a switch on (run house on solar) and then turn it off (no spare solar energy available). I was told this was not possible. In essence I want a hybrid solar system 
Ok, I was confused since you said the super charger was cheaper. Sorry about your power outages. That much be annoying!
One of my Ds lived 30 miles from Silicon Valley and during the first year living in that house they did not have electric power for a total of two months. It’s kind of crazy, but between storm outages and PGE turning off the power to try to prevent fires it added up. There are places even quite close to urban areas that don’t have reliable electricity. Their home was also highly wooded so solar would not have been a great choice. I would not have suggested an EV as their only car at that point. But while there are many exceptions like that, there are so many people who don’t realize how great their living situation and lifestyle are for getting an EV. And they are so fun to drive!
Not available. Although I think we can bypass our solar anytime we want to…but I can’t think of any reason why we would do this. We paid for the panels, have zero electric bill, and easily have enough juice to charge an EV if/when we get one.
I honestly don’t care if any extra we gain through our solar goes back into the grid as long as it serves our household…first…and it does.
But to bring it around…our system is designed to have enough power to do an EV…which will likely be our next car purchase.
In the the oil and gas space and have listened to many many presentations on the future for EV. I stand by what I said at this point in development. California, for example, get 65% of its power (electric grid) from fossil fuels (non-renewable).
Wind, Solar, Hydro etc. AT THIS POINT cannot fill the gap. And, arguably CA has much milder temps than other parts of the country.