Lewis Weil

During the nearly week long power outage I saw talk about how much it must suck to have an electric car when you don't have power. True, you can't recharge at home off the grid. But it actually was wonderful to have my Leaf last week. Electric cars are enormous batteries that happen to have some car seats sitting on top of them. Before the blizzard I made sure my car was fully charged and then I sealed it up and put away the charging cable. We had no power for days, but we several kilowatts sitting in the driveway. My mom also has an electric car. It was great for both of us because you can safely go sit in the car to warm up without worrying about carbon monoxide. I've heard from people who slept in their EVs in their garages. You can't do that with a gas car. We were able to use my car to keep our power banks charged. I would charge them during the day and then we could plug in our phones and stuff at night. I let my neighbors know if they needed emergency warmth they could warm up in my car. We were iced in, no one was going anywhere, so it didn't matter that I had limited range. But I did know if I really needed to I could find a charger in a part of town that didn't lose power. Gas pumps need electricity too, so no one was refilling their vehicles in neighborhoods without power.

I'm now considering getting solar panels and battery backups so we can avoid this in the future. But that is tbd.