"If you switched all cars over to electric tomorrow" is not a useful scenario. In reality, the shift will take decades, and that's enough time for changes in the grid to happen.
"From my point of view the only thing that stops us all from switching to electric cars is the battery technology."
My obvious point was that, in fact, that is not even remotely the only thing stopping us from switching to electric cars. My scenario was extremely useful in highlighting the fact that we do not have the capacity to switch to an all-electric car approach, and not primarily due to batteries.
We can do the battery tech and manufacturing in the present, to build very effective electric vehicles. Building up the grid to support ~500 million cars in the first world would cost tens of trillions of dollars and take decades. It makes the battery challenge look hilariously minuscule by comparison.
Batteries are not a $30 trillion and 30 year problem, not even remotely close. Batteries are an order of a magnitude smaller of a problem.
We can build the Tesla S already. Musk is going to spend $5 billion building a plant that can produce 500,000+ car battery systems. We can already make effective battery systems for mainstream electric cars, the challenge now is to make them better and scale up manufacturing (which has already begun).
It costs $5 billion in the US just to build one major nuclear power plant.
I rarely see anybody discussing where the trillions of dollars in new spending is going to come from to boost energy supply and grid to handle 100 million electric cars in the US. It'll cost trillions just to maintain what we already have now over that time.
As for where the money comes from, doesn't that just fall out of supply and demand? As demand for electricity increases, prices will go up, funding the infrastructure improvements needed to accommodate the increased demand.
The solution may not even lie in the grid. Batteries can solve the grid problem as well as the battery problem. Give every electric car customer enough solar to cover his charging needs and a fixed storage installation to keep the power for when the car comes home, and the grid won't even know the cars are there.
I'm sure this will all be wonderfully challenging for those involved, but it doesn't look like something to worry about from the outside.
Looking forward to oil-shareholders claiming how expensive electric cars for the elites are making electricity unaffordable for the poor.
"By the time all autos are switched to electric in 30 years"
You ignored what I said, and proceeded to tell me how the shift will take decades.