[stephen_g]

Plenty of this research is being done. I know of one a Dutch academic Auke Hoekstra who does a lot of this kind of thing as his main area research.

The average age of vehicles around where I am is 10.6 years, so it is unfair to pretend as if people don’t scrap most vehicles already after 15 or so years. I think a lot of the transition will not be forcing people to replace their cars but just phasing out new ICEs from being sold. The ones that were being driven by those who buy electrics will get sold into the used market and replace older, even less fuel efficient cars that are naturally scrapped.

My understanding around EV production is that it currently takes something like 3 years to cross the total lifecycle energy curve of a conventional car, and then every subsequent year is better for the electric car. Things are improving too as energy grids get greener and battery production gets more efficient.

As I said, cars still have many problems and are a quite large amount of embedded energy and anything we can do to reduce the number of cars around and shift journeys to other modes (walking, cycling, busses, trams, trains) is better again.