[wcoenen]

> A counterpoint i rarely see is if everyone would switch to EVs or PHEVs in 5 years, the electrical infra would collapse.

Electricity grids are massively overbuilt and underutilized because they need to deal with a big spike of power usage in the early evenings. So if grids became strained by EVs, it would be relatively easy to fix this: just encourage or mandate time of day tariffs.

The price signal would encourage people to charge outside of peak times. The improved utilization of the grid may even reduce distribution costs per kWh.

[timbaboon]

There are many countries where this is not true. Look up loadshedding in South Africa, for example.

[wcoenen]

Over the last 30 years, South Africa's generation capacity has crumbled from 37GW to 28GW. So yes, sure, electrifying anything there is not going to work. But I'd say that's a completely different category of problems.