this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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So on a road near where I live two petrol stations have newly opened within 900 metres of each other. This is on top of a petrol station that already existed 400 metres away from one of these stations.
And I thought to myself, to make that kind of investment in a new station you'd have to be pretty confident in the future of petrol in the medium term.
This is what makes me somewhat skeptical about the imminent switch to electric cars or hydrogen ones for that matter.
I think EVs mostly are bought by people who are in 2 car family who also own a petrol car, or those who only ever drive in the city. Most people want to do longer trips for weekends, holidays, visiting family etc. So if it’s your only car, it’s unlikely to be an EV. Other barriers are that they are more expensive for the same size vehicle, nowhere to charge if you live in an apartment, higher insurance costs. It’s gonna be a while until EVs outnumber combustion engines.
Let's not forget the fact that once the battery dies it's very expensive to replace. And the thing is it's hard to factor in whether that's worth it right now since nobody has a very good idea about how expensive batteries will be in 10 years time.
@wscholermann @SituationCake battery technology is improving constantly. I have a 10yo ev, bought secondhand and got the battery upgraded, the new battery is double the range than the old one was when new, and the old battery was still very serviceable and can be used for an off grid home battery system, but new batteries if the size of the old one are getting so cheap now it's probably cheaper to connect a new battery to an off grid pv system.