Are EVs Actually Good Backup Home Generators?

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The Washington Post seems to think so.

If you haven’t caught on by now that corporate America, including all the big media outlets, is doing a full-court press to get you interested in electric cars, I want to know what rock you’ve been living under. The pressure is getting intense but as people sitting in boardrooms high up in ivory towers keep talking down to the average person, I also think resistance to EVs is actually galvanizing.

Check out the final insult to Australian muscle cars here.

One of the latest shameless plugs for electric vehicles has come via the Washington Post as it peddles the idea of EVs acting as emergency home generators. What’s even better, the publication is telling everyone that “the house and car will merge” because your EV will plug into the home like some giant USB drive.

Of course, WaPo tells a dramatic story about a guy living in rural New Mexico when the power went out during the winter. With no electricity the furnace wouldn’t run and the father wasn’t man enough to get the fireplace going, so he turned to his Chevy Bolt for a solution but couldn’t figure that out immediately. Please don’t die from laughter because this situation is portrayed in such a serious tone it’s hard to swallow.

The guy got a power inverter so the next time the electricity was out at home he could run everything off his Chevy. During the next outage the story declares the guy’s house was the only one illuminated in the neighborhood, so he showed everyone who’s the real man even though he can’t light a fire.

Moving on, the story says the same guy has invested in solar panels (but won’t say how much they actually cost) and his electric bill plummeted. He now uses his Bolt as a backup generator since apparently power outages are fairly common in the area. And we’re supposed to believe that this is the future of living.

Does an EV work well as a backup generator for your home? Maybe, but if you need to drive anywhere during the power outage it presents two problems. First, you can’t keep running things in your house while the car is away. Second, you’re draining the battery so the driving range is diminished. Those seem like some pretty big minuses.

What’s more, WaPo repeats the lie that EVs are zero-emissions vehicles. No, they don’t emit emissions from a tailpipe, but plenty of emissions are emitted in the mining and manufacturing process and the electricity used to recharge them is also likely to be generated in part or whole through emissions-producing activities. Those solar panels also are made through intensive emissions-emitting processes, likely in China, and perhaps by literal slave labor. So there are some real problems with this solution.

Fortunately, WaPo focuses just on the fact EV batteries are expensive, which they are, and not on the other inconvenient truths. Then it goes on to admit the electric grid in the US “is not in good shape.” Imagine what would happen if everyone runs out and buys EVs, then depends on that grid to power their car.

When pushing the idea that everyone should own an electric car, and hopefully not a Tesla since Elon Musk is now bad, so many media outlets gloss over facts which don’t suit the narrative. Applying even just an ounce of logic to the situation exposes the flimsy lies, a reason why I believe more people are digging in against EV mandates.

Images via Tesla