As the owner of an EV I can confidently say they aren't ready for primetime. Also, diesel emissions has wreaked havoc on fuel mileage advancements. My parents 1980 VW Rabbit diesel got almost 45mpg when they bought it new in 1979.....yet we're still having trouble surpassing that. Part of it is emissions and government mandates, but we also have to hold the "rolling coal" crowd responsible to some extent. The optics are just not good and caused a huge backlash.
Emissions aren't all they are cracked up to be either, stack scrubbers on ships do a great job of removing particulates from the air, but they just flush all that crap into the ocean.....I would argue that's actually worse. Like so many things, out of sight, out of mind and not in my backyard apply.
I've always been on the forefront of technology just because it's my personality and I like to use the thing people talk about.
Trust me when I tell you EV is not ready for primetime. In some cases it makes sense (like mine), but there isn't enough refined copper on the planet currently, to run the power lines necessary to build the fast charging infrastructure needed to meet the governments 2035 mandate.
2050....maybe.
Also, fyi, I have 2x100amp + 1x200amp electrical service to my house. Plenty of power. Many houses struggle with a single 100a service.
TLDR; it's not ready for prime time, but has some sensible applications. Also, just because the government mandates something doesn't mean it will happen.
. Simply not possible by 2035 without an effort far larger than the "New Deal" which is unlikely to ever happen again given todays bureaucracy.Basically, they'd have to approve a small scale nuclear reactor just to charge as many vehicles as a buc-ees fuels on a daily basis..........not happening in a decade no matter what people might tell you.
Just run the numbers.........an average Buc-ees has about 100 gas pumps. No way it takes more than 10 minutes to fill a vehicle at a gas pump, but we'll just use 10minutes. That's 600 vehicles fueled per hour. Hard to say how much fuel they are taking, so lets just say 1/2 a tank, no way to know how many gallons that is, but probably in the 13-15 gallon range. besides the point. Assuming 1/2 tank, we will assume 1/2 a charge on an 80Kw battery so 40KW per vehicle times 600= 24 Megawatts per hour to charge as many vehicles as one Buc-ees can fuel in an hour.................to put that in perspective, the Hoover dam would only provide enough electricity to supply the equivalent of 20 Buc-ees gas stations. (4.2 billion Kw/yr is about 480Mwh/24=20. That's all assuming we can put 40Kw of juice into a car in 10min.......... We could reduce this down to the individual gas pump, but the end result is the same, we don't have enough electricity or the infrastucture to transfer the necessary electrical power at this time and likely won't for decades to come. ;(
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