The typical range of a fully charged electric car these days is sufficient to get out of the way of almost any predictable natural disaster. So the trick is just keeping them all fully charged at home. Any homeowner can in theory have a charger off their home power grid, but for folks in apartments and condos there will need to be a lot more than just a few chargers in the corner of the garage. There may even need to be street-side solutions. But it’s all doable and the engineering is straightforward.
People allow gas cars to sit with nearly empty tanks because it is so fast (and expensive) to fill them up. Electric cars are slow and cheap to “fill up” so the mindset and culture about it will change over time.
Maybe, and maybe not. The one time I had to do this myself, I started with a full gas tank and still ended up stopping to fill a couple of times. An evacuation is hardly the ideal condition for range, with lots of stop-and-go traffic. You need to not only get out of immediate danger but also find some safe place to lodge overnight that doesn’t interfere with the people behind you that also need to get out.
Many ran out of gas but roadside assistance were able to fuel them up and get them going again.
Houston is a city that is so large that it should have frequent passenger train service to other metropolitan areas, but it doesn’t because it has been designed for cars and planes.
You can fit a lot of people in a train, and in emergencies even more people can occupy the train in standing areas.
When cars get stuck in traffic where they’re going <25mph their main flaw is revealed: the fact that you can frequently beat a car stuck in traffic using a bicycle.
That‘s true! Vienna, Austria has over a thousand street-side chargers already. They‘re tiny and right next to the parking spot.
That scenario pushes the existing fuel delivery infrastructure to its limit already, and electric chargers provide significantly fewer passenger miles per fueling minute than a gasoline pump does. In practice, a lot of emergency plans will need to be completely overhauled to not assume most people will be able to drive themselves out of the danger zone.