We have 2 EVs and only one gas car in the family, and re: doomsday scenarios the EVs are what I find useless - if we need a “quick escape” it’ll be useless to get only a couple of hundred miles away and tied to specific locations for charging (which then takes a long time versus getting gas). In terms of long term apocalypse scenarios, we’re goners for other reasons…
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It’s in Los Angeles, underground parking, the old water main broke, the city didn’t keep up with the maintenance or whatever.
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We don’t do a huge amount of underground parking in my part of the country. Lots of surface parking and parking decks.
@UnsentDementor, are you imagining a nuclear catastrophe or something where you need a “quick escape”? I think a lot of preppers/survivalists like EVs for their ability to go off grid. Remember, if the electric grid goes out, most gas stations go down too.
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I was on a zoom call yesterday about young people and questions they may have about Russia/Ukraine. I was surprised so many in this group (it’s a mentoring program for hs students having trouble, so not honor students, not main stream) were watching the news.
Their concerns were very much on the surface (“will I be drafted”, “will we all die”) but I gave them credit for even knowing a little about the events.
I don’t think these events are shaping lives. I think they are opening conversations but not changing directions. No one is running out to join the military. People aren’t even changing summer plans.
I can think of hurricane, you need to evacuate quickly.
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I was thinking political/civil unrest like Jan 6 goes wide-scale.
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I like my hybrid. So far in the 3+ years we’ve had it have never had any problems charging it and/getting gas for it. It works fine for evacuations for us, as we’ve unfortunately evacuated a time or two.
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I personally have no interest in an EV as I’m not a prepper and don’t plan to be anytime soon. But if things went really South, I’d take a bicycle and a couple of cows over an EV. I have seen biodiesel in use years ago on a farm in Romania. It can power a farm quite well. And if you use only the minimal power needed in an emergency there are lots of options.
With our well for h20, geothermal and fireplace, I think we could cook, have fresh water and keep warm now that I think of it.
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Ah, gotcha. That could be a surprise. If that happened here I think we would probably just stay put as we are in a pretty nice area to hunker down. I’m not sure that fleeing into more rural areas would help, but we could get up to the mountains if we needed to.
Absolutely no problem for us here in NC with our EV. We always charge overnight. We deal with hurricanes every year so we know what to do. We’re number 4 in hurricanes after FL, LA, and TX. Yay NC. And you really do not need to evacuate that quickly. Hurricanes don’t spring up out of nowhere. You know about them for a week in advance and have plenty of time to prepare and charge your car. Really a non-issue with regards to an EV and, actually, a fully charged EV is fantastic to have during a power outage. We have been really happy to have our EVs when our power has gone out during hurricanes, severe thunderstorms, winter storms. They are fantastic. We are looking for another EV or we might have to settle for a PHEV for our D22 right now. Definitely not a 100% gas vehicle. Prices are so high for everything right now, though. Ugh.
This is really interesting. I do think it has changed my kids trajectories some. They definitely were not going to join the military under any circumstances (they would be more likely to flee to Canada, realistically). I do think the “will we all die” is something that a lot of kids are struggling with. I had a moment of that myself when Russia attacked that nuclear plant.
I feel like 30 years ago it was easier for kids (and adults) to ignore most geopolitical events.
I’m not sure if I want to be in an EV with all its electronics if we’re in a shooting war with another major power. All EV’s, as I understand it, are connected to some central monitoring systems. The car could probably be hacked to stop in the middle of a highway. There’re people now calling for Elon Musk to disable all Tesla’s in Russia. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and we will never have to worry about such a scenario.
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The Tesla is designed to be operational regardless of its connectivity to the “mothership.” You lose a lot of functionality like radio or cameras but it will still work as a basic vehicle. BTDT. 
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New cars in general come with telematics systems (OnStar and similar systems). Either get an old car without telematics or disable the telematics if you are concerned about that kind of thing.
I may be wrong but my understanding is that these cars, similar to smartphones, can’t be fully disconnected by consumers.
Can you please explain?
I was told that as well. In the market for a new/newish Volvo and spoke to our Volvo guy. He said any recent ones have the central shut off ability. Not something I’d want and certainly one of the main reasons I’d never buy EV. But he said it’s in the gas ones too. I haven’t checked.
We had OnStar in an old Saab. Lent it to our friend. She got in a minor fender bender and it came on. It totally freaked her out. She had no idea who was speaking. Was a long time ago.
Centralized control of anything I’m driving would make me buy something older. Maybe I’ll go for a classic car. Lol.
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Of course, a disconnected phone loses a lot of its core functionality, unlike a car.
On some cars, there may be a fuse for the telematics. For example, on GM cars, the fuse diagram may list one of the fuses as being for OnStar. Remove that fuse if you want to disable the OnStar.
You can also try to find the antenna and cover it with radio-blocking material.
Telematics is common these days, and nothing about it is specific to electric vehicles. So it is not a reason to choose or avoid an electric vehicle versus any other new vehicle.
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My understanding is that the “disconnection” is via software (what can be turned on in software can be turned off in software, and vice versa), just like in a smartphone. Modern EVs have so many electronic components that are interconnected that it’s impossible to fully disconnect and still function (even just for their basic functions).
Telematics only perform limited functions and they may be electronically isolated from the rest of cars’ electronics.
I own a Tesla so can speak for what it does and what it doesn’t. There are two independent computer systems; one is involved in providing basic functionality and safety, and the other one is responsible for the frills like autopilot, radio, etc. So the car is designed to be drivable if the other system fails (or it is “disconnected”). And if a nuclear blast fries all electronics… god help us all. We will need no cars. The only thing operational will be the Doomsday 
.
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