Regardless, that’s such an edge case, I’m not sure it needs to be a major part of EV vs ICE calculus. Here in DC, it’s a 1x/decade event, give or take - basically takes a ton of wet snow falling mid-morning, the Fed closing offices early PM, and the entire city tryin to get home that afternoon in one giant mob.
There are many populated places that are not "Here in DC" but still have lot of highways and are further north of DC.
I would be willing to bet the DC area actually has that happen more often than anywhere else in the US, because it's among the post populated places far enough north that it gets big blizzards from time to time, but far enough south that its snow-removal (and snow-prevention—eg, salting the roads) infrastructure is fairly minimal compared to places that get lots of snow all the time.
Anybody who works private sector in the area stays home (if they can) when the forecast is for snow. This wasn’t an option for most of the government (including 10s of thousands of .gov contractors). With .gov wide early release when weather hits, icy mix, and crap public transit options, it’s a combination that leads to insane gridlock on the rare occasion we get a true winter storm.
I’m sure there are regions that have one-off traffic. DC gets city-wide gridlock that lasts 8 hours or so if we get more than 8” of snow during a work day.
I'm all for EVs but think hybrids are far more practical for anything other than simple work commutes.
Also, why does everyone assume charging and electricity prices won't surge as soon as the utility companies have enough of the population under their thumb?
Electricity prices will become the new gas prices.
We need to stop this shit at the source and start capping profits.
And if electricity prices surge then regulators aren't doing their job. The costs of renewable energy have been dropping dramatically and are expected to keep dropping. I do expect the price delta between peak and trough electricity prices to widen dramatically, but mostly due to the price of trough dropping.
If you think government regulations will help reign in prices I invite you to look at the Texas power grid price structure it's highway robbery already.
And if the government can't keep current electricity and gas prices under control why should we for a second think they'd do better if we were all driving electric vehicles.
The only pattern I see is to build a moat and use their regulatory capture to raise prices while ignoring infrastructure to the detriment of everyone.
The nice thing about an EV is that you can schedule your electricity usage. On average, my EV needs about half an hour of charging daily and is plugged in about 14 hours a day. So I just charge while its cheap and ignore the times when its expensive.