—”I remain more & more convinced that pure electric vehicles will never be the norm.”
A bazillion city dwellers drive less than 100 miles a week.
The problem is most lack a garage to slow down the copper cable thieves...Most houses in my area have three cars.
Commuter car, kids car and a Sunday going to meeting car...
Two of them will go EV.
What if you don’t have a garage?
What if you park in the street because there is no off street parking?
Are we to expect that apartment dwellers are somehow going to run extension cords out of their 5th floor walk-up in Brooklyn or the warehouse loft in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood?
Electric cars are not now, nor will they be viable alternatives for most consumers until they are able to cleanly & safely manufacture & dispose of a battery that will give enough power to propel a car more than 350 miles on a single charge in both 20 degree weather with the heater cranked or 90 deg weather with the AC cranked Plus recharge in 15 minutes or less at a recharge station 350 miles in any direction from home.
That battery technology doesn’t exist & there is no guarantee it will ever exist.
Until that technology exists & the infrastructure is built out, the EV market will remain a small percentage of the entire new car market. Especially since a viable technology to replace 100% gas vehicles is already available in Hybrid Electric vehicles.
The EV market was killed over 100 years ago because the gasoline vehicle was too convenient to compete against.