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by gamblor956 2786 days ago
All of your statements are false for a variety of reasons.

1) There is a roughly 15-20 year lag time between battery technology breakthroughs and their appearance in retail products. As their are no current battery technologies with meaningful lifespans, sufficient power output, and a recharge time measured in seconds, my point stands that for the foreseeable future EVs simply cannot compete. And that doesn't even take into account the 10-20 years of research into hybrid/fuel cell/NG technology to make those vehicles more efficient.

2) Clearly you've never commuted in Southern California. Commutes of 100 miles each way aren't rare. SoCal is by far the largest market for EVs and other non-fuel vehicles.

3) Clearly you've never lived through a fire or rolling blackout. A pump can be powered by a short-lived battery at the refill site. Moreover, physical fuels have this amazing property called "physical storage" which allows them to be transported and stored entirely without the use of electricity. An electric recharge station is dead without power.

3b) Good luck with that. By the time your solar panels have recharged your car enough to make a trip to the corner market, a fuel cell car could have made a cross-country trip. And back.

3) Windmills are high-maintenance. EVs are almost as high-maintenance as ICEs. Engines are the most reliable parts of a car. The unreliable parts are common to EVs and ICEs. And as Tesla has demonstrated, it's quite possible for EVs to be even less reliable than the worse ICEs.

4) Electric charging would require us to make immense upgrades to the existing electrical transmission grid, which includes finding ways to improve transmission 100fold. That would cost tens of billions. Fuel/NG/fuel cell based distributions systems are far more efficient because there are many fewer "stations" that need to be built/upgraded to handle demand.