That's not the reality in my EU world. Almost nobody either single or with family in my wider circle of acquaintances spread across 5 countries owns EVs. One guy's mom I know has one but also has an ICE for longer trips.
Yes, statistically sales of EVS are increasing but growth is highly uneven, it's still mostly wealthy people and wealthy countries with chargers at home and businesses fleets with chargers at work. In my working class neighborhood of apartment buildings I see exactly zero EVs parked on the streets and zero chargers(could this be a connection? /s)
And cheaper EVs don't usually support fast charging. Also EVs with half decent range and fast charging are still quite very expensive for the purchasing power of the average European. The best selling cars in the EU were almost all ICE and very affordable models to boot like the Dacia Sandero, well below the price of an EV with decent range.
Biased feel good articles just saying "things are getting so much better" gloss over too many painful realities and don't really mean anything if that doesn't match the reality you're seeing with your own eyes.
> Yes, statistically sales of EVS are increasing but growth is highly uneven
But the same thing happened when horses were replaced by ICE vehicles - cars started to be used by the rich in cities and then in the country over decades/generations as cars became cheaper and running a horse got more expensive. The takeup of EVs is happening at a much faster rate than ICE.
I think the truth is somewhere in between: yes, things are getting better, but it's happening much more slowly than EV supporters claim. I'm in the UK, in a populous suburb of the second biggest city, and I have literally one fast-charging point in a 20km radius. That's not enough to serve even 5% of drivers here, if we all switched to EVs tomorrow people would start fighting in the streets to get access to it.
I don't doubt we will get there eventually, but they will not be able to stop selling ICE cars by 2035; about 5 years from now there will be an uproar and the deadline will be pushed by at least another decade. The technology is getting better, the prices are getting lower, but infrastructure is nowhere near ready.
And to give an anecdotal counterpoint: I live in (relatively speaking because small country) the middle of nowhere in the Netherlands, I have 8+ charging stations (each with at least 2 chargers) in my small town and a fast charging point with 20+ chargers within a five minute highway drive.
Not that there aren't any problems, and there are definitely "dead zones" so to speak, but the situation you're describing isn't valid everywhere.
Yeah I'm sure small wealthy green and well developed countries like Netherlands, Switzerland or Denmark have built good EV infrastructure, but in most Europe it's not like that at all.
I live in Austria now and charging infrastructure is still very sparse in the city where people keep their cars parked and there's no signs of new chargers being built so I'm also skeptical on meeting the deadline.
Also considerig that most people have old beaters, those people won't be able to magically afford more expensive EVs with worse range.
So I think your parent is right and your situation in Benelux and the Nordics is the exception not the norm. If the infrastructure doesn't massively improve across the block and the price of EVs doesn't tank along with a range increase, there will be uproar in the less fortunate EU countries who depends on ICEs and the ICE deadline will have to be postponed again.
I'd be ready to bet good money that the situation I describe is much more common, across the whole continent, than the one you describe. Benelux and Nordics will always be ahead in this kind of thing, but you're also very much in the minority.
To be fair we didn’t have most of the existing infrastructure ten or even five years ago. Once the time is right it expands a lot faster than you expect it to.
>Once the time is right it expands a lot faster than you expect it to.
You clearly don't know my city leadership/country. Stuff only starts to move after the shit has already hit the fan and everyone ahs their pitchforks out.
Yes, statistically sales of EVS are increasing but growth is highly uneven, it's still mostly wealthy people and wealthy countries with chargers at home and businesses fleets with chargers at work. In my working class neighborhood of apartment buildings I see exactly zero EVs parked on the streets and zero chargers(could this be a connection? /s)
And cheaper EVs don't usually support fast charging. Also EVs with half decent range and fast charging are still quite very expensive for the purchasing power of the average European. The best selling cars in the EU were almost all ICE and very affordable models to boot like the Dacia Sandero, well below the price of an EV with decent range.
Biased feel good articles just saying "things are getting so much better" gloss over too many painful realities and don't really mean anything if that doesn't match the reality you're seeing with your own eyes.