Unless you are purchasing a very cheap sub-$20k car, EV’s should become the only choice by 2030.
https://insideevs.com/news/506465/evs-price-parity-europe-20...
That may be the doomsday scenario. Imagine we had a new battery tech today that could cram 1000+miles into a car in say 5 minutes. EV sales would spike. ICEs would disappear. Then everyone would get their new EV home ... and the national electricity grid would collapse.
The problem with a lot of this is that the more "responsible" you're already living, the less reasonable the next "responsible" thing is to do. Going solar/off grid is only really possible if you live on a lot of land where you're the only resident, which is otherwise generally not recommended. If you live in dense housing, you probably don't have solar, let alone a way to charge an EV. I park my current car 100-500 feet from the nearest outlet that I own. There's essentially no world I could buy an EV and not have to charge it for hours outside of my home.
The efficient future is here, but it's for the rich who did all the garbage NIMBY stuff that made it necessary for everyone else to have to live "efficiently" to make up for their gluttonous use of land/power over the past decades.
By whom? In my case, I am not the only resident, I have a large family on our acreage.
Grid upgrades are a thing that's going to have to happen, but I think the concern is kind of overblown. It's not like everyone is going to switch to EVs at the same time, and over the course of a decade or two the utilities can use the increased revenue they're collecting to upgrade their infrastructure as needed.
We're going to need more electricity production to offset the increased demand. Some of that might be offset by residential solar.
That seems pretty irrelevant? It's not like you have only one ambulance.
But even then, OK, you could argue that in some specific scenarios you need an ICE ambulance. That does not mean that ambulances can't be EV.
California asked its residents to save electricity (so, among other things, not charge cars) between 4 and 9 pm - during the evening peak.
That's not when most people charge their EVs.
This has been sensationalized by some media outlets.
The country with highest share of EV is… Norway. And by a huge margin.
https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/transport...
I think you're wrong.
EVs lose 15-40% of their range in cold weather.
Most people drive so little, they could recharge once a week. And I doubt they couldn't do it neither at home, nor the office, nor the supermarket, nor anywhere else.
Stores will do everything to have people charge at their parking. Remember when hotels made people pay for Wifi? I do.
Level 2 charging (i.e. 240V home charging) is not affected by cold temperatures unless it's well below freezing, like below 0 F.
> In Oslo it hasn't dropped below -20C / -4F since 2010.
-20C is brutally cold, far colder than any coldest winter day I ever experienced while living in the northeast USA.
Aside from the general post-communism, we had -30C cold snaps.
But yeah, snot freezes at around -18C - I consider this the point at which things become universally unpleasant regardless how prepared you are.
That being said during a cold snap of -22C I saw my neighbours struggle to start their ICE cars while my hybrid just brutally kicked the engine into action.
4 miles/hour is very, very slow. It's the maximum output of a standard wall charger. Maybe you were at a level 1 charger?
The only car temperature problem I've had in the winter in Virginia hasn't been with an EV at all - just a VW diesel that had trouble starting due to extreme cold.
If you're really worried about the agencies hijacking you to kill you, you're gonna need to buy vintage.
But underlying that is the fact that there are no networked features that I personally want my car to have. So however small the risks (of both physical harm and being effected by bizarre networked car dark patterns), they are risks that I would be taking exclusively for the benefit of the manufacturer of the product for which I am supposedly the customer. As long as there is an acceptable alternative to such a product, I will always choose the alternative.
If you think this has happened, I believe you are mistaken. But I'm open to hearing evidence.
More seriously, a natural obsolescence from dead battery packs that are BER.
Things like navigation can be done on-board (proven when in zero connectivity area), and playing MP3s from a USB can replace spotify.
No idea what it might start complaining about long term though when it can't talk to the backend for extended periods.
I feel like we're dismissing other hydrocarbons too early. When I was a kid, people had propane or methane cars which were basically converted gasoline cars. Sure, not anywhere near as efficient but combined with hybrid tech for regenerative braking you likely have a more efficient car overall(nat gas is less refining energy than gasoline IIRC and we have a lot of it). You can also build them a lot cheaper since they use smaller electric motors, less coppper, less aluminum, and less lithium.
Yes I know BEV zealots hate hybrids but until we have better Li supply chains we need to conserve it and get more vehicles off of pure IC drivetrains.
What worries me if what happens when manufacturers abandon battery platforms. There have been a few stories lately of older cars- the Chevy volt comes to mind- where the batteries aren't made anymore, and replacing one is in the $20-30k, several times over what the car actually sells for.
Instead, it'd be nice if the battery packs were built in a modularized way, so that if one section dies, it can be replaced rather than the entire pack.
Otherwise, buying a used EV is a massive gamble for lower class folk who typically only buy used cars.
Probably best to wait ~5 years then buy an EV, if you can wait.
But price. That's the killer right now. They're popular, batteries are expensive. I may actually go back to a PHEV for my next car even after I swore I'd never own a non-EV again because I'm hooked. Because the price difference is 20 grand, and the EV will never save me 20 grand over its life compared to a good PHEV. I'm a bit miffed about the whole thing, to be honest. Prices are insane for everything. I need a raise, clearly.
There are lines at gas stations in developed countries? I can't even remember when I last saw one.
I missed that memo.
Eventually EVs will be so common that landlords will be falling over themselves to get chargers installed so they aren't pariahs.
Replacing street parking is going to be a bigger problem.