A total shift to electric vehicles in less than 20 years sounds quite optimistic if I'm being honest. Not signing something you know you can't meet sounds like a fair choice.
If anything I think 20 years is too long. Specially since these drafts always get diluted and things like hybrid motors are probably also going to be deemed 'electric'.
The problem will be recharging in cities. In the suburbs/countryside it is very likely you can plug your car at night in your garage or similar. This is not true in cities since owning a parking spot with access to electricity is expensive. So, if cities will start putting plugs in "normal" parking spots I don't see any major issue in shifting completely to EV.
[1] https://netherlandsnewslive.com/flanders-bans-the-sale-of-ne...
Even in places like the Nordic countries and Western Europe, massive infrastructure upgrades needs to be put in place to allow people in the rural areas to get rid of ICE's. And that's personal use. Getting forestry and agriculture to switch to electric will take many decades.
We need synthetic fuels produced with renewable/nuclear energy, and we need them fast. Yes, EV's are nice and they will cover a lot of the use-cases, but they're not a silver bullet to end all worries.
Even this winter, clearly still pre-EV dominance, is going to be interesting - if it's cold in europe for long, and if Russia decides to use their current position of power for a nasty short-term shock, that could really shift people's willingness to accept a few sacrifices in the coming years.
I wouldn't count them out just because they've got issues; those things might change quite quickly - some of the needed infrastructure can be built in just a few years, once the political will is there, which currently is lacking. Sure, it's a problem, but on this topic: what else is new.
Meanwhile the shutting down of the last nuclear power plants in Germany, the original reason for SuedLink, is on track to happen by the end of 2022.
I am not impressed by the level of foresight on display here.
I think its a rather clever choice to be against the end of the combustion engine when you can fuel them with something like: hydrogen, e-fuels or methanol. In Ingolstadt (Audi HQ is there) a former Audi engineer invented a car with 800 kilometres (500 miles). So there are alternatives to electric-only.
Any e-fuel that can use normal petrol infrastructure and is burnt in an ICE has absolutely atrocious efficiency. Not only do you lose a large fraction of the energy going from electricity to fuel, but then you burn it in an engine that has 40% efficiency is a lab and 15% efficiency in city traffic. It just makes no sense outside of niche applications.
You also have charging losses which electric cars, they are just not that high as with e-fuels. E-fuels have the advantage of being easily transportable and refuel is done in 1-3 minutes. So why not create them in countries that have much sun (free and endless energy) and convert this into something useful.
Because that's not economical. It's cheaper to ship in the electricity directly, or if you don't want to build the HVDC lines (there are good reasons for that), turn it into Hydrogen, ship that and turn it back into electricity. Electrolysis is reasonably efficient (>70%), and the round trip to electricity can be done at 40% efficiency or so. Charge an EV with that elecricity and you're still much better off than first turning the electricity to Diesel (<30% efficienct) and then burning the Diesel (<<40%).
And that's not even taking into account all the health benefits of not burning stuff where people want to breathe.
You don't need a lot of space for wind and solar. Take Germany for example. Using just the area currently used for "energy crops" (around 2.4 million hectares) for PV you could cover most of the primary(!) energy demand of the country. Wind is even more space efficient in Germany.
Yeah perfect idea using farmland that could be used for growing food wasting on PVs. Do not get me wrong, there has something to happen but perhaps only solar and wind will not safe us as long as we have no good battery technology. Therefore it would be better to store this in some fuel.
We already use that farmland to grow fuel instead of food, and we also have the technology to store the energy: electrolysis. But because that is relatively expensive you don't want to burn that fuel in shitty tiny generators, you want to burn it in efficient combined-cycle plants.
In theory, hydrogen fuel cell is perfectly fine. But then we reach the other problem: there won't be any infrastructure. Hydrogen, e-fuels, etc. It is just too expensive. Maybe fine for a few rich people driving on a track.
of course, this range is only correct with best circumstances, in practice it will be less
Fossil companies are keen on hydrogen as they can still pump their oil.
Edit: according to the specs, it should have a range of 960 km (597 miles) under optimal conditions. It sounds more than I would expect, but then the car is almost 20 years old. Still, the low fuel consumption is one of the reasons I keep it -- it uses less fuel than modern hybrids do.