Originally Posted by MartinSE
(Post 2084783)
Well, it appears your rebuttal was focused mainly on infrastructure, society, and use cases remaining constant. With population movements yet, the industrial revolution resulted in a MASSIVE movement into cities, resulting in significant demand for "downtowns" to change and massive infrastructure changes (food grown thousands of miles away instead of in the local farm)
And the grid, an area I worked in for about 10 years. The grid is an archaic design that needs to go away. It is vulnerable to natural and terrorist attacks. Outages are common. It is NOT a reliable source of energy. It should be replaced with a distributed generation system (which was being investigated by APS and Universities for a long time), which I predict the EV movement into both civilian population and industry will drive. Technology for distributed generation is advancing. I have NO idea what/which will win. A few examples are fuel cells for the home (available in commercial production today), solar panels and storage batteries for the home (available in commercial distribution today), micro-nuclear plants in the home (in development), hydrogen (in development, some commercial products available today), geothermal and hydro (both available today), and wind (available today). Most are possible today, most are not yet practical. But, I can assure you power companies a not happy about the potential of losing their monopolies. And are doing their best to pass legislation, buy politicians, and have disinformation campaigns to denigrate those alternatives.
Uh, no, I didn't say FARMERS are chomping at the bits, I said large corporations, including the massive food industry, are interested only in the bottom line and don't care what engine is in the tractors and factories. I did say, John Deere, a sort of a not small name in that field is offering an electric drivetrain soon/now?
I did say trucking companies are "chomping at the bit" or more accurately - DROOLING to get EVs with FSD. And they are. The cost-saving there is massive. Kenworth and Freightliner are already committed to (are supplying?) electric drive trains.
Anyway, I agree, TODAY the grid will not support 300 million EVs on the road (the number of ICE vehicles registered in this country.) The good news is that TODAY's EV production is at (best case) a couple million per year. So, we have at least decades (your estimate) to "Fix" the infrastructure. Other countries are "fixing" it much faster than the US. I will leave it to the reader to noodle out WHY the US instead of leading the world in this area of new tech growth is, in fact, lagging behind the rest of the world.
And the difference between my post and the "imagine the cost" post, is I provided a rather lengthy discussion of WHY I think this is the direction of the future of EVs. And my predictions are based on what the various industries are saying and doing.
I guess the alternative to market driving the evolution of EV is that some cabal is FORCING people to buy Teslas. hmmm. maybe, maybe movies are inserting subliminal suggestions in-between frames. I heard "a lot of people saying" Musk has developed technology to compel people to buy Tesla's even if they don't want them.
And of course, my references to police departments are TRUE, my reference to pent-up demand for OTR Tractors is TRUE, and my reference to every Tesla owner loving their cars and gushing about savings is TRUE. So, for my "Imagine" there is some basis.
Thank you for your interesting post. It was a good rebuttal and made me think about what I had said and how I can improve my position.
BTW, the 1908 Model T was about $900 (about $30,000 in today's dollars) by 1915 that price was reduced to about $300 or $10,000 in today's dollars. Gasoline was not produced intentionally, it was a waste product of making kerosene. And anyone that wanted it bought it in 5-gallon cans at the local hardware stores. By 1920 there were federally funded concrete highways (very hard on horse hooves, the primary means of transportation for most of the middle and lower class at that time) and a ubiquitous network of "gasoline stations". Many were at that time still pumping the gas into a can and then pouring it into the car. Many people were filling 55-gallon cans and taking them home on their horse-drawn wagons to fuel the gas-powered cars.
There was a MASSIVE infrastructure change required. We invested almost countless trillions of today's dollars in infrastructure.
Today, we can't even pass a bill to fix leaky water pipes and falling down bridges around the country, so I expect the infrastructure changes required for EVs will be slower - here in the US. On that, I agree with you. Our current infrastructure can't deal with the massive adoption of EVs. But, I have faith in our predatory capitalism system. Once big business sees there is more profit in EVs Congress will suddenly "see the light" and pass massive infrastructure research and development projects which will lead to massive new good-paying jobs. And all of a sudden the ney sayers will start cheering. Cats and dogs will start sleeping together, and birds will sing, the sun will shine and ... well you get the idea.
But, that is my "dream". I hope to live long enough to see how it really turns out.
(OH and compare the Atomic Car to the Model T - AC, radio, power windows, roof, windows longer range, etc. - VASSTLY better)
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