Replies

If they solve the range, cost and recharge time issues they still have one HUGE hurdle to get over: domestic generating capacity and infrastructure. If everybody has an electric car that is going to require a LOT more generating capacity. Capacity that will have to be built, and that takes many years to bring online. I’m not saying it can’t be done. But it would take something like decades to do it. And then the energy dedicated to gas refining would have to shift to providing fuels for the electrical plants. Unless we shifted to nuclear, which has its own set of issues. A lot would have to change for electric vehicles to have anything other than a niche following.

Well, you put your finger right squarely on the BIG problem, FRiend.

That is the 800 lb. gorilla.

There is a YouTube Channel from an Australian engineer called "MGuy"

that I have been watching for a few years, and he is militantly anti-EV. He has dozens of videos, and while his information delivery is reading from his written script and verbatim from clips of news, it is the way he puts it together that is valuable and informative.

Here are a few of his videos that discuss this issue you highlighted in particular, the need for infrastructure:

Granted, his handle "MGuy" is derivative of his apparent attraction to MG sports cars, and from the perspective of someone who owned one myself for many years, I find it humorous that any sane engineer would enjoy them due to their...er..."reliability" and engineering, but I think is is the style he likes, not the engineering!

That said, these videos concentrate on the infrastructure issues which everyone just paves right over and rarely mention except in the inane "If you build it, they will come" which would be worded in this case as "If you build EVs, the Infrastructure will come"....which is as you infer-wishful thinking.

I fully appreciate the concept of Electric Vehicles (EV) and the things that go along with that concept, the torque, acceleration, quietness, and even the concept that they may be mechanically simpler.

But I do not ignore the concepts that are problematic such as infrastructure, power generation and availability, long charging sessions, unavailability of charging facilities to apartment dwellers and motel patrons, degradation of charge intervals due to weather demands that encompass extremes of both hot and cold that affect battery usage with heaters or air conditioners, battery damage in accidents, costs of battery replacement, weight issues, tire wear, ground clearance, and fire risks with the attendant risks to firefighters, people, and buildings which will eventually result in higher insurance costs.

But most of all, I intensely oppose having Electric Vehicles imposed upon me under the false pretenses that they are better for the environment (they aren't), that they are more economic (they aren't) and that they combat anthropogenic climate change (that is a hoax that doesn't need combatting), the last one being the most egregiously grating on my conservative values.