[dsaavy]

If EVs became the primary automobile of drivers, and also became the primary semi-truck form on the road, the economics change significantly. When there's demand for charging from an additional tens of millions or hundreds of millions of vehicles in the US alone, my guess is that prices for electricity are going to increase significantly. Especially prices for any type of fast-charging capability while on the road.

Curious to see what this means in 10-20 years when comparing costs between EVs and ICEs.

That being said, long-term maintenance costs, reduction in road noise, etc. are all a win for EVs.

[ozzydave]

I don't think it'll play out this way. There's no new tech needed to scale up recharge stations, and they can continue to scale up linearly with demand, so you'd expect the supply will increase to meet demand. Fast-charging stations are most needed near highways where land value isn't too expensive so I think you'll see a lot of solar local to the recharge stations too.

[etimberg]

The cost increase in electricity is not due to land, it's due to actually needing to buy the electricity from the grid. Sure you can use solar and storage for each charging site, but then you transform the problem into a land one. Otherwise you need to modernize the grid to support vast numbers of charging stations because solar and storage won't be able to charge enough vehicles.

[mst]

I agree that the supply will increase long term, but power generation capacity tends to have a fair construction lead time and I would not be surprised if it lags demand as EVs scale out.

[_0w8t]

Most of the extra energy usage will come from cars charging at night when the demand is low. So there is no need to build new power stations, it will be sufficient to run the existing ones at full capacity at night.

[akmarinov]

True, but that also heavily incentivizes getting solar where possible, as using that free energy to also power your car makes the investment pay off quite a bit quicker, after which you'll be enjoying almost free energy for most of your needs.

[bluedino]

Don't forget about sixty cents worth of each gallon of fuel goes to repairing roads etc

[ilikeatari]

It will be key to understand short term maintenance costs too.