[hdougie]

Also from the UK (and recently converted petrol head), and anyone sensible who is charging at home is not paying the average day rate on their electricity. For example, we currently pay on average 7.5p p/kwh on our electricity. We can fully "fill" our car for around £4.50 which will buy us between 240 and 300 miles depending on type of driving. For comparison, I took our 3 year old relatively efficient ICE car to top up the fuel last night - quarter of a tank cost me £20 and only added about 100 miles of expected range (and that's at a push).

Battery packs don't need replacing "after a few years", that's hyperbole.

Having to stop on longer trips is getting better over time - granted, still nowhere near a decent diesel engine but there are plenty of EVs that can do 200-300 miles realistic range now - how many people are honestly doing trips longer than that on a regular basis, and for the ones that are, how many wouldn't already be stopping for a loo break, lunch or a coffee? I'd argue the majority of the population would manage just fine.

Not saying EVs are perfect, but there is still a lot of misinformation out there and they're getting better everyday.

Of course, if you can't charge at home then they simply don't work especially at current public charging prices (seen some stations charging ~80p kw/h which is insane!). Infrastructure still has a long way to go.

As for a Carrington Events, I have thought about this recently and yep, I guess we'd be pretty stuffed. Then again, if such a catastrophic event were to happen, I can't imagine I'd be needing the car for much - we'd likely have much more major things to be worrying about.

[reacharavindh]

I live in the Netherlands. I wish I had the right conditions to switch over from my VW Golf Diesel :-(

My home electricity costs 0.4EUR/kWh. I live in a terraced house/townhouse with no dedicated parking - this means I cannot charge my car at home/residential electricity rates eventhough I have solar panels in my roof that generates more electrcity than I use in a year. So, for my constraints, I will only consider an electric car when it becomes more economical to fill up at a public charger than a diesel car, and purchase costs come significantly down than what they are now.

I know I should not be contributing to the problem by warming up the planet. I'd instead control my urges to use the car and use public transport as much as I can, bike as much as I can(it gets me some exercise and fresh air, so why not?!). But, I'll hold on to my existing diesel car for those occasional IKEA trips, longer trips to vist the in-laws (Netherlands <-> Austria) instead of buying a new electric car which will certainly contribute to more emissions during its manufacturing.

I wish the EU countries see the elephant in the room and act sensibly by ramping up electricity generation at break-neck pace to 1. reduce the electricity prices, and 2. make people choose electric cars because it is the more convenient and economical choice than just wanting to save the planet out of good heart.

[blkhawk]

I think that parking spaces will eventually come with slow charging systems - combined with better "standby" power draw from electric cars everybody might suddenly get away with just plugging in the car every time they park. Maybe they could be even made "free" or very cheap in the sense that you mostly pay for it by wear and tear on your battery (it would only charge to 70% guaranteed and everything above it could be used by the system at any time while its plugged in).

A system like that would be something that probably needed to be implemented at a level that works in several countries.

eventually such a setup could be a large component of the buffer renewables need together with storage in houses and at the municipal level.

[reacharavindh]

One thing at a time... Even requiring the power utility companies to install a standard slow charger at most road side parking spots would go a long way to encourage adoption of electric cars in the cities(where it makes the most sense already for short commutes). This is simply an additional avenue for the power companies to sell electricity to consumers. Why wouldnt they jump on the business opportunity?! The regulatory hurdle and safety of design needs to be moved first, and then the market can take over.

I dont think using electric car batteries as a distributed grid storage is ever going to fly though. Every consumer will worry about the battery cycle degradation and not sign up for such a thing.

At the scale at which storage is needed in the grid, it would make sense to make huge energy storage facilities with cheaper/lower density energy storage solutions like redox batteries, compressed air energy storage or closed loop compressed liquid solution etc supplemented by a buffer of LFP banks to get through the variations in energy supply by day/night or even through a week.

Seasonal variation is a bit of a harder problem though. What do we do when the winds dont blow and the sun doesnt shine for more than 10 days at a time?! We need to build out _modern_ CNG power plants that can be utrned on at high capacities ONLY at such times, while they idle out the rest of the times abd not pollute unnecessarily.

I believe this is a technically solvable problem. However, we need political will to not look at the short term and think for the long term good to back such efforts and see it through.