> This is important to keep in mind when you read articles and/or studies about how electric cars or wind or solar power is impractical. A lot of the data these studies use is just obsolete.

Solar power and electric cars aren’t impractical because of the price tag of the technology but because of their fundamental properties.

Solar power cannot produce electricity on demand which is why solar (and wind parks) can never compete in a free electricity market where prices are formed based on supply and demand.

A product such as electricity is worthless if it’s all produced during peak hours even if demand is low to moderate at the time or extremely expensive when it’s hardly produced while demand is high. Even if solar and wind parks would cost nothing to build, this problem wouldn’t go away simply because prices are formed by supply and demand which have to be in balance for prices no to fall or jump extremely.

This is the reason why Germany’s electricity costs twice as much to the end user as compared to France and still causes up to ten times as much of greenhouse gas emissions per kWh as compared to France.

As for electric cars: The fundamental problem is refueling time and its geographical flexibility. A car with a combustion engine can be refueled within minutes anywhere on the planet. An electric car has to be refueled for at least an hour and needs to be recharged at a station while an ICE car can be refueled on the right-most lane of a highway if you run out of fuel and someone with a jerry can comes to your rescue.

The fundamental problem with battery electric cars is that energy is changing its form during refueling (electricity => chemical form) which is why there is an upper limit to how fast such a car can be refueled.

For ICE cars, the energy is put into your tank without changing its form which is why ICE cars can be refueled within seconds if necessary (see Formula 1 cars).

This limitation is the main problem with battery electric cars and the reason why you won’t see any large numbers of police or emergency vehicles which are battery powered in the foreseeable future.

There is a reason why solar/wind and electric cars remain highly subsidized in many countries despite of the fact that the technology is becoming cheaper. Both products wouldn’t be able to compete in a free market due to their fundamental shortcomings.