You are trying to draw an analogy between cellphones and cars? Really? The problem is that there are approximately 100 million new vehicles sold each year, worldwide. Yeah, that is a big number and the infrastructure to support that doesn't materialize overnight. It will take more than a decade to develop the manufacturing capacity to build that many electrics. Battery manufacturing capacity is the big issue. Toyota, the largest automaker in the world at 10 million cars per year, is making very slow progress and does not have an all electric vehicle for sale in the US. The legacy automakers cannot move that fast. They have all pretty much said so. Some may go out of business. Even the US Government doesn't believe it as the new tax credit legislation includes hybrids. Best guess is we will be at 50% all electric vehicles (new sales) in 10 years, and that would be quite an accomplishment.
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Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan
Well, you can still buy vinyl records and players, you can buy flip phones, you can buy horse-drawn. carriages and wood-burning stoves - Yup, you will still be able to buy ICE vehicles, just like other relics. I personally think it will be sooner than a decade because technology is expanding exponentially not linearly and the result will be some form of technology that makes ICE totally impractical. Right now ICE is competitive.
Imagine a micro-fusion reactor that can power your car/house/pool/everything for you for life and costs a couple of hundred dollars. I doubt that will happen, but look at cell phones and think of 2 decades ago. We now have a device in our pants pocket that can contact anyone almost anywhere in the world instantly with no long-distance charges, and with it, we can access almost all the knowledge in the world instantly...The same change is coming to cars. Bet on it.
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