So really the EV market is still insignificant and gaz consumption for the average household has gone up, not down.
Historical data shows that overall gas consumption is more strongly linked to the frequency of highway travel than to recent changes in car purchases. See:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/188448/total-us-domestic...
There's a drop during the Great Recession, a rapid rise during the recovery, and a roughly flat line during the Trump administration until another crater during the COVID pandemic.
Infrastructure is not there and is not going to be there for EVs for a long time.
Its not only gas stations but also power plants, transit cables, personel, supply chains, technology, laws and other.
If we make good investments it will take around 50 years in some developed EU countries to reach appropriate infrastructure levels. In less developed countries probably 100+years.
But if every parking space just gets 1KW of solar panel ~$500 and sun shines for 10 hours a day, you probably have enough power for the 30 miles of daily commute. A car sits idle for 90% of the day. We can use this time to charge it.
It's not the long road trip use case but I think will put a big dent in the resources needed to migrate to EV.
I’m not gonna spend 10 hours in an office and definitely not from sunrise to sunset. Also, 10 hours of sunshine in a day is a rarity in most of the US, especially during the winter.
Not sure I'm feeling as pessimistic on infrastructure. A bunch of the infrastructure for EVs already exists and is wired to every house. Even if we converted 100% of all newly sold vehicles to EV today, the grid build-out required wouldn't be any harder than what we've done in the past.
No reason to go further than that at this point in time. Even if we do go beyond to create a doomsday scenario for EVs, it will be worked out because few of these things are unanswerable open questions. If this were hinging on some technological homerun like figuring out fission or the Alcubierre drive then I would feel differently about it.
We have troubles generating enough power to not force blackouts in EU and we talk about introducing hundreds of millions of EVs / to every household.
Currently it all works only because they are a novelity.
EVs are certainly not only a novelty in the EU right now.
But yeah, I wouldn’t count on short grocery store stops to charge my car.
But more to the point, how many people have a regular commute, only have street parking at home, and ALSO couldn't be expected to have their employer provide charging at work? Are they doing on-street parking at work as well?
I know a lot of folks in the city who own a car but use it for errands and trips but not commuting. They're the people best served by slower charging at grocery stores, movie theaters, etc. 20 miles isn't a lot but if you're topping up every-time you use the car anyways it adds up or at the least means you only need to use the fast charger once every few months at the most.
The need will become obvious to them once market share approaches 20%.
In my buildings parking garage there are 150 cars, where probably a good 30-40% of cars are BEVs. We're pulling a maximum of 32kW, or 400V/80A. I have yet to find my car not fully charged in the morning. It's a load balanced system, so usually I get full effect of 11kW when charging.
That would be twice as long as it took the US to electrify 90% of farm houses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act
>Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn was a major proponent of the REA, which he helped pass in 1936 as Chairman of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. Rayburn stated in 1959 that ninety percent of farm homes in the U.S. were electrified, compared to three percent in the early 1930s.
Furthermore, electrifying gas stations along major highways will obviously be much easier than electrifying farms scattered around everywhere.
How many charging points do we need now vs # those farms ?
What was the quality of cable lanes used ?
Did we consider off-grid then ?
Whats the estimated cost in comparison to now ?
You make it sound simple, but its not. Making that comparison is like comparing apples to oranges.
There are ~150,000 gas stations in the United States. There are 2 million farms, and that's after significant consolidation of agriculture during the Green Revolution.
>You make it sound simple, but its not.
You are simply posting 'questions' without bothering to do the least bit of research. Looking up those numbers took less than a minute. Climate change discussions benefit from informed skepticism, not intransigent fatalism.
For me thats “a lot more” than 2 mil farms.
Its realism. Consider a situation when 50 cars have to park at the station to charge back to full. The station is out of service for the next 10h… This is a pretty common situation on highway.
We would need hundreds of those charging spots often with hotels.
Im more excited for Hydrogen cars than EVs. Its a lot cleaner and future proof solution.
(1) HOME CHARGING. In sparser areas where people live in houses with garages, duplexes, and even to some degree rowhouses, it's easy to run an extension cord and get a full charge nightly.
(2) STORE PARKING LOT CHARGING. In denser places where people live predominantly in apartment buildings and perhaps some rowhouses, there is enough density to have rapid chargers in store parking lots. You drive to the grocery store, park for half an hour while you shop, and you have enough charge for the rest of the week. There is also enough density that daily milage is much less so you can get away with charging once or twice a week instead of daily.
(3) OTHER TRANSPORT CHOICES REDUCE RANGE ANXIETY. Also at least in the USA TONS of households have multiple cars -- especially in sparser areas that are more car dependent and have plentiful parking. This creates an easy in for the plugin EV -- if one of your (typically two) cars is still ICE or hybrid, you don't have to worry about range anyway (while still putting most miles on the EV). Conversely, in denser areas (USA or EU) it is common to own zero cars or one car that isn't even used every day because public transit covers some of the transport needs. In either case, range anxiety becomes not much of a problem because the EV isn't your sole option for getting around (but, at 250mi range, range anxiety is kind of obsolete anyway)
So once again, whether you're in a sparse or dense area, there are dynamics that make it easy for many people to get started with an EV. Does it work for 100% of people, today? No. But that's how change works. Once a lot more people, starting with those who can easily do so, get EVs, it becomes more normalized, and there's more infrastructure, and the cycle continues.
Good plugin EVs like the Bolt or Leaf with 200+ mi of range are now in the $20-$29k range. It's starting to become pretty practical. They're not competitive with getting the cheapest camry shitbox you can find on craigslist and running it into the ground, but they're competitive with a lot of ordinary cars ordinary people buy.
https://electrek.co/2022/07/29/which-electric-vehicles-still...
The new car shortages are real but I don't see how they speak to long term EV viability which is what was being discussed. ICE cars are just as affected, and it's bound to get better eventually.
EDIT: It appears you have lied. The price you quote is for the fancier model of Leaf, but the base model is available for $27,800 according to Nissan's own website. I got here by searching "nissan leaf" on google. Not sure why you didn't do this. https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/electric-cars/leaf.html
This is still quibbling about details though. EVs are clearly here to stay.