I love the idea of "EV everywhere", but failing to acknowledge that vast swathes of the world do not have electric grids capable of supporting "all new cars are EV", or in some cases any grid at all, seems questionable.
Wind generators look like prices are somewhere around a dollar per watt of maximum output once you get beyond low end ~400W outputs. So again you're looking at 10s of thousands of dollars in hardware.
Both Solar and Wind are not continuous generators, so you'll need batteries, which for a reasonable capacity you're looking at more than 10k.
There are micro hydro generators but they all require a reasonable head and flow, and the way they throw around generation figures I couldn't work out when they were talking maximum output vs cumulative output over a day, month, or year (TBF this is a common problem with all discussions I can find about home power generation).
Geothermal generators are out of the question, they're not generally available, and there's no real small scale story that generates power in "I have an EV" quantities that I can find.
Also of course the customers aren't there. EV sales in Japan is 2% of the market, 7% in the US, 15% in Europe and China. Makes no sense to drop everything and ignore 90% of your consumers.
To accommodate the larger loads from charging EVs landlords will need larger grid hookups. They’re expensive and utilities don’t just give those out, they build them to sell you more electricity. If none of your tenants own EVs (yet), the utility will still want compensation for their investment regardless. Who provides that is not answered nationally, but by state utility commissions.
There’s lots of parties involved to answer the EV infrastructure question, electrical coops, investor owned utilities, property management companies, utility boards, local, state, and national governments. They all have vastly different incentives and electric car users need them all to walk in lock step to provide adequate EV infrastructure. I don’t see that happening without a serious public mandate, and visionary charismatic leadership.
Even as a property owner, the wife's car in the driveway put mine in the street.
If I'm an automaker, I'm going to root for all of my competitors to drop internal combustion immediately and have it all to myself.
Generation capacity is also not a problem. The US used to double electricity generation every decade for like three or four decades in a row in the middle of the 20th century. A single doubling would be more than enough to power all electric cars, and there is no way we are going to switch all of them over to electric immediately. It would take 10 years from today if literally not a single new gasoline vehicle was sold in the US and EVs magically boosted production today to compensate. Oh even incredibly optimistically, you’re talking about two decades to transition which is much more time than needed to produce enough electricity. This is not at all the showstopper that folks on the internet claim it is with even a cursory look at historical data.
In fact, electric companies need the additional demand to help justify and pay for building out new clean electricity production. The extra electric demand is essential for preventing a cost spiral as we transition to clean electricity. But again, that is sort of the opposite of what every commentator on the Internet says.
This is probably not viable for the majority of people. The median commute in the USA is 41 miles round trip. Depending on city/highway miles and driving style, you're looking at 10-14kWh that you need to replace. On a 120v outlet you're looking at 1kW-1.5kW depending on EVSE and your house's wiring, so the window is going to be something like 7-14 hours of plug-in time just to offset your commute. Run some errands, go out for dinner with friends for a few hours, and the battery situation quickly gets dire for the average person (keep in mind that 50% of people have even longer commutes than that!)
(edit: 120v charging is also fairly inefficient, so your 1kw charger may only deliver 800w. I didn't incorporate this in my #s)
A lot of people with shorter distance commutes are also going to be in urban areas, where condos/apartments are more common and you can't just plug into a random 120v outlet safely/legally (some municipalities have legalized running extension cords across the sidewalk but I don't think this is scalable- imagine an apartment building with 100 extension cords running from the street into people's windows).
I think we're a long way from EVs being usable for everyone (although I think EVs are also viable for a lot more situations than people expect- it's just dependent on factors like proximity to L2/L3 charging, whether or not you can charge at work, etc)
Plus destination chargers and charging at work.
This works much better than you might think if you’ve never tried it yourself.
Electric lawn mowers, weed whackers, etc have been around for decades. School buses, utility vehicles, farm equipment (some things that are diesel, too) will all need power. If your combine and harvester require diesel and unit economics drives the price of diesel through the roof, your food will cost somewhat more. As will the cost of delivery. What's the state of electrification of heavy machinery?
Meanwhile the rest of the company is free to do the switch.
A large reason why car manufactures update model lines is to comply with updating emissions, efficiency, and safety regulations. This is the environmental condition that forces major model refreshes.