| Potentially FROM 2035 only electric vehicles would be for sale on new car lots. Most gas cars already on the road will still be there for 10-20 years after that. By then, Edison Electric Institute (a trade-group for utility companies) predicts 70-80 million EVs on the road in the US. By 2030, 15% of US homes are forecast to have solar on the roof, which would continue covering 100% of the electric use of the nation's electric vehicles. The average residential solar installation generates enough energy to cover a 14,000-mile-per-year vehicle's charging 3.5-4.5 times over. Each house with solar panels generates enough energy for its cars and some of the neighbors' cars that don't have solar. I put solar on my roof two years ago. It's the average system size, taking up 2/3rds of the south-facing side of my roof. It cost 1/3rd the price of my car to get installed, it completely covers my fuel use for two cars, and it covers 100% of my home electric and heating bill 9 months out of the year. EV electric use isn't a problem utilities need to solve so much as a solution to a lot of utilities' problems. 70 million EVs are many gigawatt-hours of battery storage that will be connected to the grid bidirectionally in the not-distant future. They can store renewable energy during the day and feed it back to the grid at night, they can power houses and businesses during peak load events so peaker plants don't need to be spun up, and lots of other things that will make the grid more resilient and cheaper to operate without significant capital expense to the utilities. |