What about natural disasters /evacuations? Nothing is better than a diesel.
I have lived along the Gulf Coast, and Southeastern Atlantic coast of South Carolina, My criteria for buying a car was solidified YEARS ago when I had to participate in a hurricane evacuation. Diesel is the way to go.
Maybe not hurricane evacuations, but what about in Canada 2-3 years ago when a fire wiped out Ft McMurry? EVERYONE was forced to evacuate.
It took 12 hours to travel from Charleston S.C to Columbia SC during Hurricane Hugo. It's normally a 2 hour drive. But when everyone evacuates from the coast in a 2 day period, traffic moves at 10 mph for hundreds of miles
Hurricane Ivan forced evacuations from Florida's peninsula all the way through the Gulf coast. MILLIONS of people on the road during that one from Houston to Tampa as we all scrambled inland to get away from a Cat 5 storm. Ever see the Southbound lanes on an interstate during a hurricane evacuation? EVERY lane on both sides of the median is moving inland. 4-6 lanes of bumper to bumper traffic as far as the eye can see. All those people are ahead of you for gas, food and a place to stay.
Oops... There's no where to stay. Gotta keep driving. Along with everyone else.
For those who evacuated, evacuations were complicated by gas stations running out of gasoline, full hotels, full rest stops, closed restaurants, etc. Think you're going to make it 250 miles inland to get unleaded gas? Guess again. Every station ran out yesterday when the first 300,000 people beat you out of town and they can't get trucks to the area, all the interstates are in emergency inland only mode.
Electric vehicle? Good luck making it to a charging location. You can always bring an extension cord, wait-- you'll have to buy a $500 Evanex adapter pack, so you can plug into 4 different types of wall plugs. Hopefully you'll find one that will allow you to park within 25 feet- the length of your extension cord with super-heavy-duty rated amperage. Don't worry, after a 12 hour charge you'll have 132 miles of "range". Unless you use your wipers, lights, and AC. or move slower than 60 mph. You might as well go inland for 150 miles and just park in a Walmart parking lot and hope that you've picked a place where a tornado wont touch down.
Oh well, everyone will go home in 3 days when it passes. Every power line within 200 miles of the coast is down. And even buried power lines are turned off by the power company because so many lines are down to save whatever transformers are still functional.
Your gasoline powered car can go 270 miles in bumper to bumper traffic before needing gas? uh oh.
For me- I'll keep my TDI's.
Even if Im not evacuating from a hurricane, someday I might be part of some mass-evacuation for something.
By the way-- Isn't the Super-Volcano under Yellowstone getting more and more active?
Hmmmm.. I better top off my tank.
