[Ol*Geezer2018]

Terrible to see the news on the thousands of people loosing their homes...Any forum members in the paths.? Curious, how do you evacuate , drive , in horrible traffic jams, and still gas up ? Do the service stations run on backup generators after the Elec Utility shuts the power off.? Sorta think the generators needed would be rather big, as I only saw that once here on east coast , and large diesel gens were [finally] brought to stations on flatbed trucks...only for a day or 2 ...
Curious if any of you Calif residents may have neighbors with Tesla cars...sitting in garages with low battery...unable to recharge...Would they start to evacuate ? or ? Wonder if Calif will have a different outlook on "going Green'...

 

[ONEZ ST]

Ex California here. This is mostly a man made issue involving bad forest/land management, loonie power blackouts due to I'll maintained power grids. Seems there is more focus on carbon limits than people's livelihoods.

Lots of irate family members back there with two that are close to the Getty fire but not in the evacuation zone.

 

[Ol*Geezer2018]

Well...I thought we might hear from some that are in Calif...But, if they were...prob no electricity to have internet ..! I'd can picture some neighbor with his garden hose at backyard fires, while his Tesla sits in garage, and he soon gets a evacuation "ride" from a neighbor in his Charger...In other words, if you had a choice of vehicles...would you escape in your Tesla EV, or gas eng car...?

 

[krautmaster]

My daughter lives in the San Jose area (Milpitas) and they had big fires/ power outages in July. My sister lives a little further south in Marina (just north of Monterey) right on the beach so she has no worries right now. The private shareholder owned utility companies have been putting their profits back into share holder dividends (as they are required to do by law) rather than spending it to put the power lines underground like the public utilites have done. No easy solution, but you can bet you are going to hear a lot of cries to make the power companies public. I thought they had fixed the issue after the Enron scanadal, but I was wrong...

(they both voted for Gavin Newsome for Govenor, but now they want AHHHHNOLD back!)

 

[Ol*Geezer2018]

Wow....Bring back Arnold....Fire all those "girly men" at the power companies...! Anyhow...after it's over...will the typical Calif car buyer still be in a hurry to buy those EV's...If they can't depend on electricity to recharge...I don't see how the power grids can handle it when All is fine either...

 

[ONEZ ST]

If that's the true heart of your question head over to the Tesla forums. The forum is rather small IMO but they do have a thread on the fires. Inc.com, also has an article addressing how the power outage is affecting Teslas plan to sell everyone an electric car.

Tesla, is currently recommending owners keep the cars at 100% and to monitor charging station availability on their App. Right now owners of electric cars with low and depleted batteries that are unable to recharge them are probably viewing their cars as sealed eco biospheres rather than transportattion.

Tesla also has plans to install batteries in the Super Charging stations to keep them operable for a limited amount of time during outages. Not sure how long they would stay charged tho. I can invision Tesla owners in a hissy fit yelling at each other for a station connection with the loser retreating to their biosphere safe space.

The real question isn't what Tesla owner will do when there is no power. Rather, is there anyone in Calif making plans when PG&E and Southern Calif Edison go bankrupt and they have to bail them out at the same time their electricity rates skyrocket.