Mad Max notwithstanding, ICE vehicles are going to be hard to keep running post apocalypse.
I’m wondering if I can attach a trailer to my EV (Tesla Y? F150 Lightning?) and tow enough solar panels to put a decent charge into it, possibly even as I’m moving on down the road.
Alignment to the sun might be an issue, but I could drive one day, and then spend the next one charging up?
And sure, a better armed/bigger guy will likely kill me and steal it, but would it work in theory?
Going at low speed (but faster than a horse drawn wagon) most of the time, you probably could. But once the batteries fail, it won’t matter much.
Converting an old, simple carburetor engine over to burning alcohol is probably the likeliest solution. But that needs some infrastructure.
Don’t forget during the apocalypse the wind will be stilled and the sun’s brightness will be dimmed by IIRC 1/3, so solar and wind power will not be doing so well.
Converting a diesel to run on motor oil, transmission fluid, or mineral oil found in power pole mounted transformers seems like a likely path initially. Coverting a gas engine to run on woodgas also seems likely.
Alcohol requires crops, which we know that certain grain prices are going to be very very high by the rate one of the 4 horses of the apocalyse will be charging (basically work all day for just enough food for one person for that day). And while common grains will still be available, the bio-fuel food crops will not be touchable (oil or wine)
Any vehicle is going to only be usable for a limited period of time. Even scavenging, spare parts will run low, some repairs will be beyond your ability, and some parts will deteriorate with age, whether they’re in use or not.
Alcohol will be bad for many of the parts on old simple engines. Newer flex fuel engines will be able to tolerate alcohol better, and generally are going to be more reliable, but they also contain computers and other parts that are impossible to recreate in a blacksmith shop.
For the interim time, while technological artifacts are still readily available, but new low-tech solutions are not adequate replacements, I think something like the electric F-150 would be ideal.
You could tow an RV with a bunch of solar panels. It might not be able to charge quickly, but it would mean you could move occasionally to follow the migrating buffalo, or whatever.
The nice thing about the F-150 is that you can also use it’s battery to power all of the other electrical things which will be convenient to have around. Some days you might have a net drain on the battery, but then a sunny day where you don’t drive or use the arc welder will catch you back up.
Because, as far as energy is concerned, you’re self contained, you won’t have to brave the zombies near the population centers to collect fuel. Of course it might be nice to have a portable generator on hand to supplement your power when you do run across fuel stores.
Some camper trailers already have solar and inverters built in, but you’re scrounging, not shopping, so lets do some basic math. Lets start with an 8x20 foot camper, and some Harbor Freight solar panels at 3x2.2 feet and 100 watts. After building some frames and stuff, you have 16 solar panels on the roof for 1600 watts total. That’s definitely level 1 charging territory. Maybe after inverter losses, and non-ideal sun your down to the 1000-1200 watt range.
A brief search shows that the F150 lightning extended range battery should be able to go from 15-100% in 19 hours on a 220 32-amp circuit, so about 7000 watts. Divide and multiply and we have about 133 hours to charge fully at 1000 watts. So, figure only charging when the sun is out, and maybe it will take 2-4 weeks to fully charge off the little solar array.
If you’re going to be camping in one spot that long, maybe it’s worth having some portable arrays that you can pack away when you moving. So lets say a week to fully charge on 3000 watts, assuming you use a bit of what you put in to run the stove and heater/AC.
You could move a few hundred miles, find a good spot, stay for a week or two while you recharge, and then move on. A pretty slow way get anywhere fast, but all of that stuff should still be working 10 years after the apocalypse when all of the easy fuel is gone.
I think a big determiner of how quickly you can charge is whether you’re scrounging post apocalypse, or if you have a few hundred thousand dollars to get ready pre-apocalypse.
Invest in war elephants now
A bigger concern for me is that if everyone had an EV and a disaster occurs that kills the power grid, we will have tied our ability to evacuate or provide goods to that same grid. And if we abandon natural gas heat and go electric, god help us if the grid goes down during a snowstorm here in Canada. It will be a mass casualty event if it persists foe days or weeks.
We are looking at a a Ford Lightning with the ‘toolbox’ generator in the back. It turns the thing into a plug-in hybrid when you want it, extends range dramatically with a some jerry cans of gas, and if you are boondocking with a trailer could give you plenty of power for an extended stay off-grid.
As a bonus, in the apocalypse you can use electric power when available, and supplement with whatever gas you can scrounge.
You could do the same thing with any EV and a portable generator. You can get ones the size of a suitcase that would charge a battery MUCH faster than portable solar panels.
Way ahead of you, pal. Fortunately, my loft has high ceilings and the building has commercial floor structural capability, but my landlord is not happy about the increased volume of waste.
Stranger
I’d take a diesel or kerosene engine for the apocalypse plus you can use it to make molotov cocktails for the rampaging hordes. If I was going to go electric I’d be focused on hydro electric and wind long before I went solar. You’re going to need running water for a variety of reasons so transforming that to electric will be more robust then solar panels.
And any investing that YOU’VE done in hay futures, etc. would undoubtedly be just a coincidence.
Ummmm actually I only invested in shovels, but I went big.
So, war elephants aside, the mobile electric vehicle plan isn’t really viable due to issues of scale and efficiency. Taking the Tesla, which uses about 21 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per 100 kilometers traveled on flat ground, using LG NeON 2 which has an industry leading 21.5% conversion efficiency, and assuming ideal insolation in the American Southwest of about 5.5 kWh/m2 per day, you would require almost 18 square meters of surface area for your solar panels. This isn’t so bad—that is about the area of a 28 ft trailer—until you realize that it would require the panels to be optimally orientable; a fixed angled panel gets at best around 75% effectiveness, and a more practical-for-trailering flat-laying panel is somewhere around 60% depending on time of the year at southern US latitudes. So now you are looking at ~30 square meters of panel area, and a 50 ft trailer.
This is, of course, assuming that the additional mass and drag of the trailer isn’t taking additional energy to move, which it most certainly will even if you are just pulling it on flat maintained highway (which also isn’t going to last very long in your post-apocalyptic wasteland). You are probably better off having a portable set of panels than you can set up in optimal orientation on your “off-day” that fold up onto a smaller, lightweight trailer, and than you can spend that entire day adjusting for maximal gain, all so you can go about twice the distance that you could go by horse in a single day.
Of course, lithium ion batteries will eventually degrade with age and cannot be produced without an enormous technological infrastructure—not only billion-dollar clean fabrication facilities held to clean room standards but all of the logistics of mining, transporting, and refining lithium and rare earth materials—so such a solution would be temporary at best. And should something fail in the power control system, you would have no way to fix it. Electric vehicles really require significant infrastructure to maintain them that is beyond the scope of any would-be survivalist
Maintaining a mechanical internal combustion engine under such circumstances is also tricky, and setting aside the issues of finding sources of fuel or synthesizing it out of natural oils or alcohols and the various contamination and corrosion issues that come with that, just finding a supply of suitable lubricants independent of reserves of whatever motor oil you find at abandoned NAPA stores would be an exercise in futility, which is the real reason that George Miler didn’t make Mad Max 4: The Search for SAE 5W20. However, at least most of the powertrain issues with a carbureted or mechanically fuel-injected car could be repaired in a basic machine shop and/or with a suitable supply of JB Weld, which is really the commodity any self-respecting prepper should be buying and burying in paint barrels by the truckload.
Stranger
Oh, great, now you’re going to get all the scavengers to start digging up my yard
Thanks - those were the numbers I was too lazy/unknowledgeable to figure out.
Sounds like if I want to be moving, probably every other day. Not as worried about the batteries wearing out - 10 years or so (8 year warranty so I imagine with a bit of luck (and declining range) it should last maybe even twice that) is probably all the longer you could actually keep an ICE vehicle working also (entirely made up feeling).
And if I have my off-the-grid house covered in solar panels, my 4WD Lighting could move me around my estate for that same 8-16 years.
Well, depends on what the apocalypse entails. Certainly, the gasoline is going to go bad eventually, but there are ways around that with a bit of knowledge of chemistry and mechanics.
However, depending again on exactly what the environment is during the apocalypse, an EV might be a good choice, though perhaps not for the nomadic lifestyle you are projecting here. Personally, I’d find a good place for water power (a river, perhaps…somewhere I could have water basically use water and gravity to build a small turbine) and set up solar panels and perhaps wind as well. Then you could plug in your EV (or several) as well as enjoy some other comforts while the world dies.
If you are going nomad I think you will need to scavenge more, so it’s probably shanks mare for you, or really something like a bicycle would probably be best, once the gas in the tanks either blows up or goes bad. You COULD convert a vehicle to run on alcohol, or better yet get a diesel to run on cooking oil, as that might last a bit longer on the shelf, or if you are industrious you could make it yourself. But I think a good bike would be your best bet, especially as the roads deteriorate away. Put in a stock of inner tubes and rubber tires and some way to protect them from the elements in your doomsday storeroom and you should be set for a while.
Microturbines are a great source of constant power if you live on a reliable supply of running water but it would take a really large one to generate enough power to recharge an electric vehicle in regular use. They’re really better suited to constant demand applications like refrigeration. There is also a lot of maintenance associated with any kind of water turbine, and keeping it running for years on end would require a stock of replacement parts. It is one of those things that seems like a good source of “free power” on the face but the more you get into the details the less sustainable it seems. Provided you have the climate and appropriate latitude, photovoltaic solar is really about the only practical solution for charging something as power-hungry as a car without resorting to internal combustion.
A bicycle is a good idea with the caveat that even a mountain bike needs groomed or paved ‘trails’ to move efficiently; fine for somewhat broken pavement but not for travelling over rough ground, and of course there are real limits to how much you can bring with you even with a trailer. Also not so great in inclement weather or high winds, so it may be more or less suitable depending on climate. Long term, the most sustainable option for nomadic travel is the classic one, i.e. the horse (or camel in desert climes), and donkeys, mules, or oxen for hauling cargo.
Stranger
I actually have a small one that runs on a stream and a small waterfall at my place in the mountains…along with solar panels. Electricity can be spotty there, and you definitely don’t want it to go out in the winter. It is some maintenance though, no doubt…and I don’t charge an EV on it, just run my basic electrical devices (I also have a small generator and a lashed-up battery backup system).
Not sure how sustainable any of this would be over the long haul. I can fix a lot of stuff using the machine shop I have, but all of the specialty stuff would be beyond me and I’d have to scavenge for it…maybe have a stockpile of the really critical stuff as spare while it lasted.
Agreed…that’s why I think shanks mare would be what would actually happen. Personally, I don’t know much about donkeys, horses, mules, or oxen, so that would probably be out for me except maybe to eat, but some 'dopers probably know about that stuff and could make that work. I’m probably too old to worry about surviving long in the apocalypse anyway, so I’d most likely give out before the spares did. 
You say this like 90% of home heating in western Canada isn’t already dependent on the grid. The heat may be natural gas, but very few furnaces will heat anything without electricity.
That’s true, but a gas furnace doesn’t require a lot of electricity to run. A small generator would power the blowers and circuit boards just fine. Also, the hot water will continue to work for most gas hot water heaters.
I am seriously considering a transfer switch/subpanel this fall, along with a medium-sized backup generator. I’d put the furnace, refridgerator, some LED lights and other essentials on the subpanel, and power that with the generator.
Because long before the apocalypse, if we continue the drve for renewables without a reasonable storage plan we’re going to see increasing grid instability.
Our neighbors had their furnace fail while they were on vacation in December a few years ago. The result was frozen and subsequently burst water pipes, which flooded their basement. It probably did $30K in damage. Imagine if the grid goes down in Edmonton n January and 100,000 homes go unheated for a week. Won’t that be fun.
At least with a redundant gas/electric heating and power system I have options I can take to prevent freezing in the dark. If everything is electric, no way. I think an electric-only renewable power system for Canada is so risky that my wife and I are thinking of moving south if it becomes clear that’s where we are headed.
Also, in winter I keep my car no lower than 3/4 tank of gas, and I have a couole of 5 gallon jerry cans as well. If a disaster hits, I can drive at least 600 kilometers south. Or if I had to stay here I’d have 30 gallons of fuel for a generator.
Oh, and the perfect vehicle for the apocalypse would be a Kawasaki KLR 650. Simple, carbureted single cylinder engine, designed to go anywhere on or off road, a giant 6 gallon tank, tires with inner tubes that can be repaired in the field, and the entire bike can be dismantled with a small toolkit mounted on the back of the seat. I’ve had one for nine years, and have done all the maintenance myself. You could keep one going for a long, long time. And get great gas mileage.
I know we’re only part of Canada when we feel like it, but in Québec about 65% of homes use electricity as their primary heat source. And, of course, most other types of heat require at least some electrical power. We switched out our oil furnace 2 years ago, now we have a heat pump and a 15-kW electric furnace and we sleep pretty soundly.
There were ice storms in 1997 and 1998 which caused major regional blackouts, the transmission network’s been reinforced accordingly but no plan is infallible. My main worry is terrorist attacks on the grid : it would only take 5 or 6 bombs and good timing to bring everything down for several days.