However... Add up all the time a gas car spends at the pump, that an EV does not (charging at home), and I'd guess most people will spend less time waiting for the EV than for gas.
And the charging time is coming down. My older Tesla is limited to 100kwh charging, the modern ones can use chargers in the range of 250kwh.
What does that mean? kWh is a measure of energy not power. Does the charge stop after delivering 100kWh? How long does it take to do that?
Sometimes I feel like these discussions about EVs are strangely divorced from most people's lives. We will likely make our next purchase an EV purchase, and I think the cost of waiting on long trips probably has to be considered against other annoyances of ICEs, but the economics of this are a major reason more people don't switch to EVs. Even the cheapest ones still cant compete against the ICE market as a whole, especially when you consider the used vehicles that will be in circulation for some time.
Adding costs will just make it more difficult for people to afford anything.
If people want EVs to take off, they need to incentivize purchasing them, not tax the ubiquitous alternative. If the carbon costs are real, manifest it in decreased costs for the alternative. Otherwise it's all theory.
Optimal tax is closer to $126/ton, so my “shooting from the hip” was a bit low.
Carbon credits in Europe are trading for 50EUR/ton ($58 USD) currently.
(nobody is currently paying anywhere near the true cost per ton of emitted carbon)
Right now european gas prices range from 1.2 to 1.6 euros per liter depending on the country (eastern europe tends to be cheaper and western more expensive). And that's for 95, 98 tends to be a few cents higher.
That's 5.3 to 7.1 USD/gal. 90c/gal would be a significant but at the end relatively minor increase: it's less than the increase in gas prices since the start of 2021.
We're a long ways from that, or even having the political will to start planning, let alone construction. It would do wonders for vehicle cost and weight, though, if people could get by with a 100-mile battery and still be able to make cross-country trips. And the environmental and cost benefits of electrified trucking would be huge.