| > consumers are already making this investment by switching en masse to EVs I don't think we are there yet. The US fleet of electrics is in the range of about one million units. Total cars on the road is about 300 million. In other words, electrics represent 0.3% of the total fleet. That is a very long way from "en masse". Electrics, without a doubt, in some form, are the future. We all know this to be true. However, the adoption curve requires solving a bunch of problems and an expansion of the infrastructure that is also nowhere near being adequate. This translates to a simple fact: We need far more competition and far more entrants into the segment. Not announcements, but rather real vehicles you can buy. Car makers have been announcing and showing models that are vaporware for years now. I learned a long time ago that this is bad business. I used to do this kind of thing during my early days as an entrepreneur. It frustrates the customer base to no end and makes them lose trust in the company. It isn't quite lying, but it's close. I believe the inflection point will come at the intersection of a new energy storage technology (let's call it "batteries" for now) as well as the infrastructure to support it. The fires and power issues we are having in in California highlighted the weaknesses: You can't adequately charge your electrics during emergencies and range issues make them either inconvenient or just plain dangerous. I'll bet a lot of people have been made to reconsider electrics in CA precisely due to this experience. Power self-sufficiency by means of a large enough solar array at home could mitigate some of this, however, this does nothing for the person caught in an emergency away from home. We had friends who had to endure three hour trips to go get their kids after forced evacuations due to fires. When you are concerned about the safety and well-being of your loved one's, particularly kids, having range and charging issues isn't a joke at all. In fact, it's a powerful deciding factor against electrics. For context, as soon as the fires started we drove 5 minutes to the local gas station and filled-up our tanks. We got hundreds of miles of range pretty much instantly. Even better, we didn't have to think about extending that range at all, because the infrastructure is ubiquitous and available without issues outside the affected radius (and within a very small fraction of the vehicle's range). I'm not down on electrics at all. Just being realistic. It will happen when all the conditions are met and there are a dozen companies offering real products, rather than three. Lateral thought: My thinking is that the future of electric transportation will require an energy storage system based on LIQUID charging rather than plugging in. We need to be able to go into the equivalent of a gas station, pump out the spent portion of the electrolyte (or whatever) and pump in fresh "charged" electrolyte. It needs to be 5 minutes in and out for 0 to full range. I realize this might not be as "green" as people would like it to be. Not that electric cars are green at all (just wait until we have 300 million battery packs to deal with as waste). Going from 0 to full range quickly by plugging --assuming a charge storage system that could handle this-- requires very dangerous voltages and currents. I am not sure what this would look like if we had 300 million vehicles on the road with a need for that kind of energy to be delivered that quickly. I think I can say that our electrical grid is likely not designed to deliver at this rate (I haven't researched this but I have a sense this statement is likely true). Anyhow, not a simple problem. At a personal level, we were about to invest in one or two electrics by the end of the year. The fires and power outages have painted a real negative light on the practicality of these vehicles when things matter most. We'll have to rethink. No conclusion yet. |