even if batteries weren’t in their miserable state of lousy energy density compared to petroleum and even if they could be charged in 10 minutes. EVs still could not take the place of ICE vehicles for the simple reason that the electric capacity to to provide that much energy DOES NOT EXIST.
As an example let’s suppose that the battery fairy develops a magic battery that holds 100 kwh and takes 10 minutes to charge. How much demand power is that? 10 minutes is 1/6th of an hour so that is 600 kw. Now suppose that rather than a single charging point you have 10 charging points in a charging station and because there are going to be a lot of these magic battery vehicles you need about 50 stations in a typical midsized urban area. This is 600*10*50 = 300,000 Kilowatts capacity or 300 megawats. The full output of an average commercial electrical generation nuclear reactor is 880 megawatts. So you’re going to need about 1 full sized nuclear reactor for every three midsized towns. And the solar wind fantasy is not going to make a fart in a hurricane’s worth of impact on this demand. The USA doesn’t have a couple of hundred PWRs sitting around idle just in case some miracle that violates the laws of physics and chemistry in the battery industry happens. These have to be built and the lead time for a nuclear plant is roughly 15 years.
Excellent layout of the situation, thanks.
I suspect the Green New Deal zealots never managed high school math and think electricity can be brought in with a kite. America cannot afford the total failure their policies will create.
This not equivalent to the automobile taking over the function of the horse. Apples to oranges.