The article doesn't really touch on it but someone here will know: do we have any kind of projections on how long it would take us to shift to EVs (e.g. proportion of vehicles on the road which are electric over time) and how that compares to the rates at which charging and electrical infra can be improved/expanded? Does that second point hinge on the current infrastructure bill?
I live in a city and don't have a dedicated space. I'm not sure how they're going to put in EV charging infrastructure for us. I'm not alone in this problem, so I"m not sure how an EV would work for me or a lot of us City dwellers..
I guess they could make us go to a charging station for 30 minutes every week, or put in charging stations along each street. Maybe battery swapping?
The cities seem to have the most to gain from having cleaner air.
I live in a city, and though I have a dedicated space, I cannot independently choose to put in EV charging infrastructure, so I also don't know how this will work out in my current place.
But I'm more thinking like ... Texas had its giant power outage. California sometimes has rolling blackouts. If a large proportion of vehicles were electric, the current system couldn't handle it, right? And if a large power outage in turn has follow-on effects on transportation where it's suddenly harder for goods or people to leave, that seems even worse.
So I hope _someone_ has a plan for how the power grid and energy storage and charging infrastructure all need to grow and become more robust at the right pace, in parallel with EV adoption. And that plan, I hope, includes projections on both EV adoption and charging infra availability and power grid capacity and resilience?
Charging infrastructure buildout will no doubt influence new EV sales, but the timeline of a transition to EVs on the road (as opposed to the dealer's lot) is largely a function of the secondary (used) market. The secondary market, I think, will transition slowly because as EV take-up increases, the price of gasoline is likely to fall.
Several manufacturers have already announced waypoints for their transition to EV. Audi is targeting 2026 for a full phase-out of ICE [0]. Among its light-duty products, GM aims to sell only ZEVs by 2035 [1]. Ford passenger vehicles sold in Europe will all be electric by 2030 [2]. I could list more, but the message is clear; it is an impending transition and automakers will likely use certain marques as a beachhead for going fully EV while keeping the ICE vehicles compartmentalized in other marques. A headline of "Jaguar plans to be all electric by 2025" is more compelling than "Tata Group plans to sell more electric cars by 2025," even though both headlines describe the same story. Similarly, automakers that have struggled for the past decade or two (eg, the American ones) seem to be taking this opportunity to redefine their role in the market as first-movers.
Price and perceived cost of ownership (net maintenance and repairs) are a major part of consumer choices, too. As an extreme example, look at places like Ecuador where new vehicles are so heavily taxed that it's common to see forty-year-old cars on the road. The old cars hold value because few can afford the new ones. If EVs are not price competitive, perhaps there won't be so many customers willing to pay a premium for them.
As far as I am aware [3], the current version of the infrastructure bill as negotiated does indeed include a hefty sum for EV charging stations. I for one believe this is an impactful decision given the long-known chicken and egg problem that EVs face. Ultimately, I think we are slowly reaching the point where the incentive for private businesses to install chargers is becoming clear. Tesla for one is opening its charging infrastructure to other brands [4].
