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I suspect Tesla knows their space fairly well. Until there is a car that can go 400 miles on a single charge and recharge in 2 minutes, with cheap repairs and work well in all weather conditions for a decade or two, you won’t see the masses jump on EV. You may see people in cities (often these are more affluence).

I don’t really see EV becoming wide spread (I.e. ~50% of the market) for at least 10-15 years. Even then, power prices will spike at homes. I don’t even want to imagine what that’ll cost.




Even if people's home power bills spike, they'll still save plenty of money by not paying for gas. In parts of the US, a decent commute will cost one $200 to $300 in gas a month, and charging an EV off the grid for the same range will cost a lot less.


Is this really a good thing for the environment? Grid power is still mostly fossil. Even if we posit that fossil -> power station -> grid -> battery -> motors is, say, twice as efficient as fossil -> fueling station -> combustion engine, it's a lot more than twice as cheap. So wouldn't we expect the shift to EVs to cause energy consumption to rise, and hence also emissions?

I understand the argument that it's easier to upgrade centralized power generation to green technologies than the entire fleet of vehicles, but the timing is critical if that is to be a net win for emissions, a nuance which seems to be swept under the rug as everyone's keen to avoid fuel taxes by switching to EVs.

Of course, if everyone switches to EV electricity demand will spike and prices will rise, and governments will be eager to reclaim lost fuel tax revenue with other automobile focused taxes. It might not stay cheaper.


Even with coal fired power stations it's still better. One of the reasons is people don't consider the vast amount of energy used to refine petrol.


The timing is fine. Large power plants are already far more efficient than burning gasoline in tiny ICE's. On top of that, fossil fuels are only 65% of electricity generation in the USA. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3


With an ev, you only need to wait on charging it you are taking a long trip. With an ICE you need to stop at a gas station pretty much every week.


For most people 300 miles of range is plenty. Longer range and quick charge time only matters when you are taking a long trip - and I would say 10min charge time will be sufficient to make it moot point when comparing to ICE cars.


My wife car rarely does more than 30 miles in a day. I don't think we have ever driven it 400 miles in a day.




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