Herb Tarlik wrote:
Zoue wrote:
I don't think recharging is as big a problem as you are making out. What's easier: plugging your car in when you get home or when you arrive at the office, so you have a full tank whenever you set off, or going out of your way to find a fuel station when it may not be convenient? Countries like Norway and the Netherlands have shown it can be done. When I had a GTE, I was parking on the street and still managed to find a charging point every evening. If they can do it, why would it be such a problem for other countries?
Tesla has shown that range is achievable without sacrificing performance. Yes, their cars are relatively expensive, but surely at least part of that must be economies of scale. The technology already exists, even if it is in its infancy. But governments have to be organised enough if they really want to be behind it.
I have lived in several major cities in several different countries. Never once have I had a parking spot. I street parked with the vast majority of the time my found spot was 2-3 blocks from my home. I did this along with several hundred thousand other people. Every day a different parking spot. There are 1 million street parked cars in places like Chicago or Atlanta. There are 5 million cars in Shanghai or Beijing or Mumbai, all parked on the street.
You would have to have a charging point at every single parking spot in cites like that to have electric cars even remotely reliable.
No one here has even attempted to paint a feasible picture on how this will happen. The cost will be staggering, absolutely staggering world wide.
People here treat this problem as if it were trivia.
The difficulty of finding a parking spot has nothing to do with electric charging points. If every spot had a point, it would still be difficult to park.
No-one's pretending it's not a major cost, but that doesn't make it impossible. Every major infrastructure project is a major cost. A decade or two ago all the parking meters in the town I lived in at the time were replaced with electronic, networked versions. That must have been a huge cost and that wasn't even driven by necessity. Where I live currently there are multiple on-street charging points. Not every spot is one, but they are reasonably plentiful. So it's not a huge stretch to imagine them gradually increasing over time. Or maybe technology will make that redundant. I read recently about a system that allows you to charge personal electronics wirelessly, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility that this may translate to other applications, include EV charging. And this is with technology that is being worked on today. Other projects include one which allows induction loops to be buried under the tarmac and cars to be charged as they drive. Etc, etc.
To implement any infrastructure overnight would be a Herculean task. But a phased, coordinated implementation over a period of time would not be impossible. EV take up won't suddenly jump to 100% overnight, but the easier the infrastructure makes it, the less resistance to it there will be. At Schiphol airport in Amsterdam a taxi company changed its entire fleet to Teslas overnight, because they recognised the long term benefits. And with a half charge taking only 20 minutes, they don't lose much downtime at all. Expensive doesn't mean impossible
It was claimed in this thread that 50% or more of all cars will be electric in 10 years. That's overnight for a project of this scale and cost.