First of all thanks for the long reply, while I disagree you have take times and energy to answer and today that's rare and valuable.
On my counter-point, in order:
On residual value, while I know it's not common norm I do not buy vehicles to re-sell them after few years. I tend to prefer keep them longer (around 8/10 years) and use them at December to get more discount from the vendor. I do a bit of math and found this as a good ration between having a vehicle with proper maintenance that do not give me much surprise during it's life and do not spend too much in continuous buy&sell game.
On fossil fuels, yes, they benefit from many kind of subside, however not for us "end-users" but only to the industry and resulting price does not came in relation of subsides but, at least in EU, came as a bank for our governments to milk money without introduce more explicit taxes.
So came the decision to ditch diesel that IMO pollute far less than gasoline in newest Euro6+ versions and offer few extra benefit like:
- less maintenance cost;
- less fuel per unit distance;
- safer in case of accidents (diesel does not explode and it's very hard to burn from heated metals/sparks);
- easy to stock in big quantity without explosion risk (nearly no gas production) and without loosing efficiency after years of stock.
Those IMO are the real reason behind actual marketing against diesel. Since we know that we do not have gasoline trucks, nor in general gasoline heavy vehicles nor we use anything else to start newer ship motors. So we know that we do not really ditch diesel before we have something like small nuclear reactors safer and cheap and scalable enough to be on any heavy vehicle. And those vehicle actually pollute far more than private car's.
On charging infrastructure I laugh: try to compute how much energy demand a single classic car, sum that for the total number of car of your nation and try to compute how many GWh/day your nation need to charge an hypothetical all-EV car's nationwide fleet. Perhaps only Norway, Sweden and Swiss with their nuclear+hydroelectric power and very low population can afford that demand. Without counting the fact that we can't distribute such energy without burn our actual transmission infrastructure.
Battery life IMO it's a problem, not only for the car owner but also at a scale since we do not know how to dismantle used batteries and keep pushing them to poor countries does not really scale, nor is morally acceptable.
BTW in most cities people do not have a garage so they can't recharge their vehicle at home. That's a classic marketing picture of an individual house of happy people with a garden and a private garage. That's exists for few countries and for little areas of them. Not for the vast majority of developed world.
Also on distance travels they are surely not a majority but many people do work traveling on car's for long distance, and some of them are ruffly high in "social rank" of our timocratic society...
In the end, no, I'm not convinced at all and I add few point in the mix: I can easily store diesel easily for even few months of complete autonomy (because I've moved from the city to the mountain so I have adequate space). I can do the same for gasoline but at a far bigger risk (explosion/fire and time degradation). I can't do for electricity. Of course you may say that without electricity I can't do many other things and that's right but only partially: I can't be in comfort but I still can live, far better than cave-man survival. My garage big bi-energy freezer can work on propane/butane for around 4 months without gas bottles supply. I can cook on wood stove despite it's uncomfortable. I can heat water with the very same stove + thermic-solar panels that also heat my house via a VMC, I do not have one now but I'm planning to add a photovoltaic panel that's enough for thermic-solar water circulation + VMC. So I can stand, without comfort but far better than being in a camping tent. And my diesel car can move.
Another point to the mix: EVs tend to be connected/require regular connection to the vendor for many things, internal combustion vehicle are more and more connected but I can still buy and use unconnected one's.
Long story short I'm looking for, I hoping for a greener future, but I foresee a black future instead, not only because of climate change but because of actual social trends. And EV are a part of that black picture, not a dream of a better future...
I will just answer one of your points, because this is something I looked at recently:
>On charging infrastructure I laugh: try to compute how much energy demand a single classic car, sum that for the total number of car of your nation and try to compute how many GWh/day your nation need to charge an hypothetical all-EV car's nationwide fleet. Perhaps only Norway, Sweden and Swiss with their nuclear+hydroelectric power and very low population can afford that demand. Without counting the fact that we can't distribute such energy without burn our actual transmission infrastructure.
You should do at least some rough maths before making such comments, it is not hard.
In my country - Australia:
- Electricity consumption per capita is about 11,000 kWhr/year
- There are about 0.7 cars/capita
- Annual km driven per car is about 15,000.
Electric cars get roughly 5 km range per kWhr, therefore if ALL cars in Australia became electric, the electricity consumption would increase by (15000/5)*0.7 = 2100 kWhr per year. Less than 20%.
If most of charging occurred at home at night, there would be no need to upgrade the grid, or power generation capacity, as the night-time utilisation is under 50%.
Furthermore, the batteries in the cars could, with just a little thought and effort, act as a grid reserve, feeding power into the grid during peak demand, and, in some countries, absorbing non dispatch-able power generation such as wind and solar.
Try to compute differently: how much usable energy you milk from gasoline/diesel? How many fill-up you do per week on your car? Now compute it at national scale and imaging it in electrical energy instead of chemical.
That's the "most real" consumption you can compute... Another easier and raw/spannometric computation can be counting a 70/80% recharge per day per car.
Results are far bigger than yours :-)
And I forgot to mention that Australia is one of the few developed country with a very little mean density and population so you have many possible energy sources and few people who consume them...
On my counter-point, in order:
On residual value, while I know it's not common norm I do not buy vehicles to re-sell them after few years. I tend to prefer keep them longer (around 8/10 years) and use them at December to get more discount from the vendor. I do a bit of math and found this as a good ration between having a vehicle with proper maintenance that do not give me much surprise during it's life and do not spend too much in continuous buy&sell game.
On fossil fuels, yes, they benefit from many kind of subside, however not for us "end-users" but only to the industry and resulting price does not came in relation of subsides but, at least in EU, came as a bank for our governments to milk money without introduce more explicit taxes.
So came the decision to ditch diesel that IMO pollute far less than gasoline in newest Euro6+ versions and offer few extra benefit like:
- less maintenance cost;
- less fuel per unit distance;
- safer in case of accidents (diesel does not explode and it's very hard to burn from heated metals/sparks);
- easy to stock in big quantity without explosion risk (nearly no gas production) and without loosing efficiency after years of stock.
Those IMO are the real reason behind actual marketing against diesel. Since we know that we do not have gasoline trucks, nor in general gasoline heavy vehicles nor we use anything else to start newer ship motors. So we know that we do not really ditch diesel before we have something like small nuclear reactors safer and cheap and scalable enough to be on any heavy vehicle. And those vehicle actually pollute far more than private car's.
On charging infrastructure I laugh: try to compute how much energy demand a single classic car, sum that for the total number of car of your nation and try to compute how many GWh/day your nation need to charge an hypothetical all-EV car's nationwide fleet. Perhaps only Norway, Sweden and Swiss with their nuclear+hydroelectric power and very low population can afford that demand. Without counting the fact that we can't distribute such energy without burn our actual transmission infrastructure.
Battery life IMO it's a problem, not only for the car owner but also at a scale since we do not know how to dismantle used batteries and keep pushing them to poor countries does not really scale, nor is morally acceptable.
BTW in most cities people do not have a garage so they can't recharge their vehicle at home. That's a classic marketing picture of an individual house of happy people with a garden and a private garage. That's exists for few countries and for little areas of them. Not for the vast majority of developed world.
Also on distance travels they are surely not a majority but many people do work traveling on car's for long distance, and some of them are ruffly high in "social rank" of our timocratic society...
In the end, no, I'm not convinced at all and I add few point in the mix: I can easily store diesel easily for even few months of complete autonomy (because I've moved from the city to the mountain so I have adequate space). I can do the same for gasoline but at a far bigger risk (explosion/fire and time degradation). I can't do for electricity. Of course you may say that without electricity I can't do many other things and that's right but only partially: I can't be in comfort but I still can live, far better than cave-man survival. My garage big bi-energy freezer can work on propane/butane for around 4 months without gas bottles supply. I can cook on wood stove despite it's uncomfortable. I can heat water with the very same stove + thermic-solar panels that also heat my house via a VMC, I do not have one now but I'm planning to add a photovoltaic panel that's enough for thermic-solar water circulation + VMC. So I can stand, without comfort but far better than being in a camping tent. And my diesel car can move.
Another point to the mix: EVs tend to be connected/require regular connection to the vendor for many things, internal combustion vehicle are more and more connected but I can still buy and use unconnected one's.
Long story short I'm looking for, I hoping for a greener future, but I foresee a black future instead, not only because of climate change but because of actual social trends. And EV are a part of that black picture, not a dream of a better future...