Smart car keeps family connected during blackout
Stuart Evans used his 2013 Smart ED Cabriolet to ride out last weekend’s power failure. Only the North Delta man wasn’t in the all-electric two-seater — he was plugged into it.
Evans’s home router, laptop and a smartphone charging station drew power from the car while it was parked in his driveway.
“It was just like a little slice of camping only with Netflix and power for phone and iPad charging,” he says of the 48 hours his family of four was without power.
The 54-year old has worked in and around the electric car business for the past 15 years, first as the director of business development for an EV charging station manufacturer, and then as a consultant specializing in the high-tech industry.
Using a $30 inverter plugged into his car, Evans ran an extension cord to his home for power.
“To be fair, what I did could be done by anyone with a (gasoline-powered) vehicle,” he says, explaining the inverter he used can be plugged into a 12-volt car battery. “But the penalty of having a low battery in a gas-powered car is you can’t start when you need to.”
While the inverter Evans used could not support the power supply required for a full-sized fridge or freezer, it can power a small fridge or electric cooler. Evans estimates his car could power such a system for days, if not weeks.
More robust inverter systems are available. Nissan, builders of the all-electric Leaf, offer a “power control system” in the Japanese market, where household power can be supplied from the Leaf’s lithium-ion battery. The automaker says for a Japanese home, a fully charged Leaf can provide regular electric power for two full days. Tesla’s Powerwall energy storage system, available in Canada, is also advertised as an emergency backup supply, but does not plug directly into a vehicle.
But Evans says the cost of these units does not warrant their installation.
“At most ( in a power failure) you’re probably looking at $1,000 of food spoilage,” he says. “The things that upsets most people during a power failure are there are no lights on and there is no entertainment.”
Except in the Evans’ home.