Yup, and we will see. With every other automaker jumping into the game, Tesla making it's design available in public domain - I expect in two years we will see a LOT of different designs.

The BIGGEST challenge I see right now to getting the exponential growth going is the battery supply. All the other manufacturers are going to have a hard time catching up with Tesla's battery supply - Tesla has a big lead and makes their own.

But, maybe not, we could all be nuked back into the Stone Age - someone said, if WWIII is fought with nukes, WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones...

You might want to look at the links I provided before discounting them. The non-KIA site is an independent evaluation of the vehicle you linked to.

You are taking a KIA marketing line, up to 310 miles (going downhill with a tailwind and the air conditioner off on a good day) and disputing an independent evaluation. Even the KIA information of charging to 217 miles in 18 minutes makes me question the 310. Would they really advertise a 70% charge in 18 minutes or would they advertise a commonly-quoted 80% charge? If the 80% charge then their range would be 270 miles which, while greater than the 237 found by Edmunds, and though technically fitting the "up to 310 miles" marketing line, is less than 300 miles of usable range.

I'm not against EVs at all, I would love to find one that is both affordable and meets my needs. Doesn't exist yet.

What I am against is unsubstantiated claims such as that there are several manufacturers of EVs with a 300 mile range and a price tag under $35,000. Google won't find them because they don't exist, at least without the marketing qualifiers of "up to 310 miles" and "after rebates."

To answer your question, I have made at least 10 trips of 300 miles or more (several were 900-1200 miles) in the last 12 months.

And yes, a gas cart. A pretty safe bet given the ratio of carts on the paths these days. In my case, price and availability trumped zealotry.

You had me completely with you until the last word. "Zealotry" really wasn't needed.

How long will it be until an electric long hauler is robot driven? Probably not too far in the future.

Tesla has several orders we know of, but can't produce the trucks right now because they can not produce enough batteries to keep up with the demand of the auto market.

The design is complete-ish, and it waiting for batteries to begin delivery.

Tesla is building more battery factories as fast as they can around the world, and upgrading existing factories to "better" batteries.

I expect they will start delivering functional beta's within a year. I also expect at least for a year or two they will require a driver to be present - "just in case". But the advantages are so enormous that customers are ready to pounce when they become available.

Currently there are around 300,000 to 500,000 long haul drivers in the US. I expect it will take at least 5 to 10 years to produce that many trucks.

Also, other truck companies have announced they are going to be producing soon. There are several components. The engines may be produced by one company, the cabs and trailers by another. The software for the Full Self Driving yet another. I read that Cummins has announce some electric drive trains, I am not sure if they are long haul or not.

Detroit has also announced electric drive trains to their product lines, I do not know their delivery schedules.

I expect a diesel drive train could be installed in a FSD (Full Self Driving) chassis, but I have not heard of anyone planning that. I don't see why that would be "harder" than electric, and so that could help increase the rate of conversion to "robot" FSD long haul trucks.

When it comes will probably be out west where there is less traffic with humans making first pickup drive to interstate handing off to robot who will drive to terminal for final delivery made by human/

I don’t see totally autonomous robot driven trucks with no human in the cab anytime soon. There is a lot going on in the cab of a truck that requires brain power, not computer chips.

GM has a government/Blackrock/CFR gun to their head.

You "expect" a lot...

Scotty has millions of viewer’s followers on utube. he’s a Toyota whore, has been mechanic since teenager. he claims he’s millionaire from his online posting and reviews. You either hate him or love him due to his raw opinionated pod casts. Few can dispute majority of his reviews with facts.

Anytime you can eliminate labor and benefits CEO’s/companies going to be all in. I predict some day the right lane will be only for driverless trucks. But, not in my lifetime. :duck:

What you get when federal government bails you out several times. :duck:

trains are electric driven, it takes big Diesel engine to drive the generator to produce the electricity to move the train ( the original hybrid engine producing vehicle) Now I guess could have train load of battery cars 20 deep and wrap them out every 100 or two hundred miles. Take a lot of energy to move train and that’s on level ground.
Trains have been electric driven when they retired steam engine trains. As far as long haul trucks not going to happen in my life , one ot two hundred miles is not long haul IMO.

Dinosaurs!
 

Polluting, smelly, noisy complex internal combustion engines (and their expensive maintenance) are thankfully going the way of the dinosaurs as are those who refuse to embrace new technology. When you can't stand change (even when it is a good thing) you know you are too old.

P.S. Check your grammar

At work we use $100,000 battery packs (run time a couple of hours) to handle the data center load until the Diesel generators can stabilize. Batteries will never replace the generators.