| > No, that's not why. Gasoline is still largely king because it's the legacy technology, so it has a very wide install base and it's still cheaper. Do you know why it's so popular? You can fill up anything from cars, jets, boats, planes several folds faster than the current battery charging technology. Battery also tends to have a fixed weight even if its used up which becomes a no-go for the military and aviation. If what you say is true about the average electric vehicle driver, that they rarely charge and it's a none issue, consider for a moment the average gasoline vehicle driver, who can't afford an electric car, who doesn't care as long as it takes them from A-Z as cheap as possible, who are more likely than the electric car driver to leave in less affluent neighborhoods requiring longer commute, the downtime is more expensive than someone who can afford to wait around 30 minutes to get a partial charge. When you start to leave the city core and drive long distances, the ability to quickly recharge energy and get going again is critical. The infrastructure for battery charging has quite some time to go before catching up. Ironically with the increase usage of such power stations, the power to manufacture both batteries and charging stations would still cause pollution and harm to the environment. There's no silver bullet here and electric cars will be just another niche for people who are rich enough to care about the environment, while majority of wage earners would be lucky to even afford a used gasoline car. Public mass transportation will benefit the most from reduced cost of operation due to fuel, but that's also minimized the trend of falling oil prices. When oil became cheap, people chose to go around half the earth than through the quicker Suez canal. It's a testament to how powerful the price of oil is in our society. |