Electric vehicles seem to be THE THING these days. Ads for electric cars and trucks seem to be everywhere. Just watch a college or pro football game on television. Yikes! One commercial after another!
And there are rumblings that sales of petroleum-powered vehicles will be banned one day soon—California is leading the way. And, more often that not, other states are following right behind.
So let’s look 25 years down the road. What do you see? Are gas- and diesel-powered vehicles absent or almost absent? Or do things look pretty much as they do now—all the electric vehicle hype and other mumbo jumbo just a bunch of hot air, with our current engines still out there in force, powering us down the highways as they have for more than a century?
What do you think? Please leave a comment. And remember, if you are on a slow internet connection it may take a few moments for the poll to load. But stand by. It’ll be here straight away and it will be worth the wait.
Humans will abandon places that ban gas/diesel vehicles. So then there won’t be any tax payers or peons left for the global elite to rule.
This will go down as the largest scam that has been fed to the general public. Make no mistake, green energy is a hoax and when people open their eyes and see exactly what it takes to make this viable, they will realize this. Flame suit on!
Right behind human-caused climate change shutting down the economy for the flu.
everything about it is better. Better driving. Less maintenance. Cleaner for environment. Long term cheaper (not today).
Where is all this mythical electricity supposed to come from?
Good question, Seann. There’s an interesting opinion piece in the NYT by Bret Stephens, about this very question, “Where My Climate Doubts Began to Melt”.
where does it come from today? The advances in solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, and lng are tremendous. There will be incredible changes within 5 years and the question is 25 years. Power will not be the problem. Commodities will be a bigger challenge for batteries but I’m sure we’ll solve that.
PS…the fact that nuclear isn’t a key investment source is absurd. Incredible opportunity in smaller plants that produce more than what current ones do today. And safer than most alternative energy forms.
Did you ever wonder how the Navy has operated nuclear powered ships since the 1950’s safely, but in civilian life nuclear power is so dangerous? I wonder if it could be related to the lack of knowledge back then about nuclear energy. Back when everybody built bomb shelters and kids were taught in school to “duck and cover” in case of an atomic bomb blast. I do, I went through that time period. It’s because they practice extreme safety on board ship and don’t allow pot heads to work there. There hasn’t been many accidents in the last 50 years and the ones there were have been controlled except for three mile island. If nuclear power is operated by careful people it’s as safe as any other form of power, but the naysayers only think solar and wind.
They will have to get back to you on that..
Lol
According to the man in the White House, everybody knows electricity comes out of the wall! Yes he said that!
Do you have a 5.25″ floppy drive? 3.5″? How about a CD ROM Drive? My current laptop has none of these. Before going full time I bought a device to reformat videos of our children from VCR tapes to MPEG. I sold my Nikon camera because Kodachrome and TriX film are no longer readily available.
When you look under the hood of a fully electric vehicle it becomes clear quickly why electric vehicles will replace gas/diesel powered ones. The innovations in batteries and motors that are happening today are much like what happened in the early days of computers that went from 180KB floppy disks to 1.2 MB in a few years. Now it is difficult to find a USB drive less than 8GB.
I expect electric vehicles to replace gas ones similarly. Today’s electric vehicles will seem like iconic 3.5″ floppy disks. Once the wave of the future and now obsolete. I expect my next tow vehicle to be electric because it will offer superior range and power for the cost.
Internal combustion will remain. I, however, will be quite extinct.
Technology can change very fast, especially when driven by demand &/or regulations. Generally, I think there will be a lot less vehicles on the road in 25 years with the advent of driverless Uber type services. It will be more cost effective to use these services instead of owning your own car. But, as long as gas is available, the die-hards will continue to drive their gas vehicles. Large electric vehicles like RVs could become prohibitively expensive for the working class. I suspect life will be much different 25 years from now.
surprised on the number of NOs. The fleet available for sale will be close to 100% before 10 years from now. So the buying cycle will be close to full turnover in 25 years to electric.
Wish we could all time travel back to see the media created by horse salesmen when cars started to come out
I would hope that 25 years from now the world will have have discovered a alternative fuel to gas and diesel. Electric vehicles will probably not be sustainable in the distant future due to the limited supply of materials to make the batteries and the ability to recycle batteries. And unless power generation changes to nuclear or a combination of green energies such as wind and solar (doubtful), electric vehicles will still rely on fossil fuels to charge their batteries.
The cost of mining the material for batteries, the destruction of the environment by mining and the lack of battery and EV disposal facilities makes the wide spread use of EV’s extremely unlikely.
It would take a lot of invention to make big enough batteries that charge fast to power RVs, trucks, boats… it’s more likely that hydrogen will become the fuel of choice and existing IC engines will be converted to run on it. Oh, and the electricity to make all the hydrogen will come from fusion reactors.
But not in 25 years.
In the US, I look for EVs to be the prevalent vehicle in higher population/urban areas. I’m guessing there will still be a significant number of gas & diesel but certainly in the minority. Third world countries will still be fossil fuel as they’ll lack the infrastructure for electricity. Necessity will drive us ( I hope), to realize the only low impact power source is nuclear and we will build the capacity we need.
Where do you think all this electricity comes from? Answer – fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are used to make the electricity to charge electric cars. Global warming is a bunch of BS. The earth is going thru its natural life span just like our human body goes thru its normal life cycle. Other methods to produce electricity are never not enough to supply what we need.
Ummm, ever heard the words ‘renewable energy?’ Have you ever seen solar panels or wind turbines? I purchase 100% of my home’s electricity from renewable sources. And you can too! Hello??
And all those have to go somewhere when they stop working…
Can you say ..polluting of the earth ?
The wind turbines are an eyesore !
IMHO
High powerlines are an eyesore. Telephone/cable/power poles are an eyesore. Wind turbines are at least elegant in appearance.
The only “problem” is those silly things require fossil oil to lubricate them, shame on them. I know, we could get rid of all the plastics in our lives, that would eliminate a lot of that nasty fossil fuel. Whoops there goes the cell phone, the iPad, the computers, the TVs,durn we’ll be back in the 19th century with all that gone. I’ve got an idea, let’s put duct tape on every libs mouth, now we can live in peace and keep our modern conveniences. Or better yet, round up all the greenies and take them to a deserted island and dump them and they can live happily ever after without fossil fuel. Lol
ELEGANT ????? WOW..🤣🤣🤣🤣
That’s for someone else to deal with, not the greenies worry.
good for you. your choice doesn’t affect me or mine. you do you and we’ll do us. but that’s not the topic at hand.
Do you sit in the dark at night or are you lucky enough to have found the location where the sun shines high 24/7? And you never have a cloudy day.
We own an EV, it is powered by the solar panels on our roof as is our home. It’s not that hard.
good for you! not everyone has a single-family home with a roof exposure to the sun for X-hours per day. not everyone lives in a mostly sunny climate. what about persons living in condos, apartment buildings, folks in the cities? you do you. we’ll do us.
They apparently work the night shift, unless they’ve found that magic place on earth where the sunshines 24/7. If you work days it’s hard to charge with solar panels.
I totally agree with you…
Gas/desiel will be here forever. What ever happened to magnetic travel. Japan built a train that ran on such. I’d like to see more investment I rail. Not enough solar\wind/tidal power in place to run much and nuclear whom is moving into the neighaborhood?
I find it interesting that the biggest stone being thrown here is about electric vehicles. As noted below, think about the changes in the last 25 years. Few of you had a cell phone and it was a bag phone. Now many of you are reading or writing your answer on one! As in every technology, if needed, it will evolve, and evolve quickly. I do not see battery powered vehicles will be the next technology, as batteries are not a viable option. But I do expect a new power source to come along which WILL change how we travel. I bet in the late 1800’s, horse owners said the auto would never be a viable alternative to horses – see how that worked. I do expect we will see a change in the transport of products. Over the road trucks are NOT the answer. And if you really want the answer, it’s fewer people on the planet. The population of this planet is over-capacity. Things like Covid-19 are a warning, and it’s coming! And by the way, we DO know how to recycle batteries, we are just are too lazy!
agree with this. fuel cells may be the answer.
Until the “great minds” can figure a way to stop the electric cars from burning up and totally upgrading our electrical grid system, those cars are doomed.
If you check statistics, there are a lot fewer fires in EVs than gas vehicles by percentage of vehicles.
You need to check the statistics, you also need to look at the news concerning EVs exposed to salt water and how they don’t just get flooded but turn into fire bombs in FL.
As people realize the damage to the environment that mining the minerals needed to make the batteries, electric motors, wind generators and solar panels there will have to be a great rethink. Also our electric grid will need trillions of dollars before it can handle the amount of power it will take to meet the demand and to produce this electric with renewables will also need trillions. We hear of these promising new breakthroughs that will make this technology less expensive, more efficient, easier to build and recycle but after years of news flashes what has actually been implemented. This new electric nirvana will be wholesale destruction of the environment and the world economies without better planning instead of dreaming and real breakthroughs in technology. I’m old enough I will be gone before the worst of it but as it stands the future will be bleak.
While I believe that EVs have their place. I also believe that gas/diesel powered vehicles are still needed for many aspects of life. At least until technology can find a way for a semi tractor to pull up to 80,000 pounds of trailer for 8 hours straight and hundreds of miles without needing recharged. And, the recharging will have to be accomplished within 8-12 hours so cross country shipments are still feasible. Plus, don’t forget huge ships and trains. You need to be able to go very long distances carrying extremely heavy loads. When technology passes these challenges, then, EVs will be able to be the dominant method of transportation.
We made our mistake when we abandoned rail transportation for long distances. If we want to increase EV trucks, they will need to be short distance hauls such as from the local rail depot to their local final destination.
ok…so now we need to obtain the land to expand the rail system into areas not currently served. eminent domain seizures of private property. government hearings. environmental impact studies to protect a rare golden spider. and the inevitable lawsuits. ultimately who’s gonna pay for all that? the railroads? hah! if there was a buck to be made they’d already have done it. nope, it’s gonna be the taxpayer. that means a gummit program. remember how much the ObamaCare website cost? and it didn’t work! look up how much it costs to build a single mile of new interstate and how long and much it took to get the land. I’ve likely got less than 25-years left on the planet and am dang sure I’ll be driving an ICE vehicle until I’m gone.
People still ride horses. That isn’t the most common mode of transportation, but some, who aren’t in to fighting traffic at all times, still get away and ride a horse. I personally would love to see that engine developed that would run on water, or better yet- urine! Talk about your renewable energy! There was a guy who almost had such an engine perfected- but he died—>????🤔
95 percent of construction in the world is fueled by diesel fuel. There’s no way you’re going to get electric equipment like dozers to do the work all day. The biggest thing in California and will be the same in every state is lack of electrical supply. This last summer in California they told people don’t plug in your EV as it was in Brownout stage with the electrical supply. With only 1 percent of EV’s in the state how are you going to charge the 50 to 75 percent of EV’s in the state by 2035?
Our government has put the cart before the horse, with it’s thinking. We do not have the infrastructure to support the EV industry. Will the Federal Government make the taxpayers pay for the building and support of nationwide charging stations? As a comparison, when the gasoline powered vehicles hit the roads in the early 20th century, did the government build gas stations? Of cause not, private corporations invested and built them. Same should be done with the charging stations, or does the government just want more control?
That’s what just happened when the bill was signed into law about building hundreds of thousands charging stations. The government doesn’t have any money except what they collect in taxes.
Actually, the government doesn’t have any money except what they take from its citizens by threat of force. Remember: Nothing the government gives you is free. Someone had to pay for it, and at the rate our gov’t is going into debt, that someone is our children and grandchildren. We are selling future generations as indentured servants!
“The thing”? Bet you wanted every fad toy and clothing out there.
Think about what works for you.
We have seen this before, but in other venues…. It is all about cost and convenience. The daily driver car in my garage was made in 1995 and so is nearly 28 years old. Fuel is more expensive, and it is not worn out but there is no need to replace it. When repair is no longer economic, I will look to replace it. Until that day, it will stay my daily driver. If fuel becomes too expensive, that may change the economics and until then I will keep it.
my ’03 Jeep is in excellent mechanical condition, but chassis rust is making the few repairs more costly. i replaced the 16-yr old OEM shocks 3-yrs ago and the tech nearly had to take a chisel to the rust. Considering selling it and I will likely replace it with another ICE vehicle.
Many good points have been made about how and when EVs will supplant fossil fueled vehicles. Heavy duty construction and farming equipment will continue to be fossil fueled for many years in the future. Batteries will never have the capacity to support availability needed in those industries.
Personal vehicles, cars, busses and trucks, on the other hand, will continue to be the focus of the EV revolution with the pendulum continuing to favor battery power. In fifty years, I believe that all new vehicles will be electric and fossil vehicles will be a thing of the past, with used vehicles only amounting to 26% of the market. Gas stations are already addressing the change by adding charging stations along with conventional gas/diesel pumps.
Where are you seeing that? I’m sure gas stations want to tie up their pumps with an EV sitting there 2-6 hours.
You are missing one point: where will people want to recharge their EV? 1) at home overnight and 2) at retail facilities such as restaurants where they will be staying about an hour. So gas stations are the totally wrong location for EV charging stations because it means the customer has to just sit and do nothing while their car charges. No one will do that in our current multi-tasking generation.
for cross-country/long distance travel the EV batteries will have to be re-chargeable in 10-minutes or less and have a range of 300+ miles per charge. and the place to do that will be at highway truck stops and gas stations in addition to restaurants, motels, etc. Have you been to a typical highway restaurant or motel lately. seen the parking lots? how much real estate is gonna be taken from parking for the recharging kiosks? less parking = fewer customers = rising prices to keep even = fewer customers = rising prices, etc. etc. etc.
Oil companies are still building new fuel stations with likely a 30+ years life. If electric was taking over why build new fuel stations. people will drive less due to fuel cost but no big change to EV,
I think the percentage of electric vehicles will be significant but the power grid will not be able to handle the demand, especially during the summer months.
No
The US and World cannot exist on electric.
Eventually it will become useless as the power grids, landfills cannot support all electric use or disposal.
Fossil fuels will remain.
The rest of the world will never be ready for mass use of EV. Look at Cuba, they still have a nice fleet of ’57 Chevys. And the majority of Americans I meet understand the cost and limitations of EV and see it at best as an addition to our transportation infrastructure. The real problem is demonizing fossil fuels and the self righteous preaching of people rather than incorporating EV into the existing transportation system. Intelligent people realize that we have attained the highest standard of living in the history of mankind thanks to the use of fossil fuels and aren’t ready to risk it to appease people who really haven’t lived long enough to know how to think out and solve problems.
I understand that so many, if not all of those 50’s cars have been converted to 3 cylinder diesels
Shame on them, that’s dirty fossil fuel. They should put sails on top of the cars.
What all the naysayers forget is we have over 10 years to figure it out. Look what we’ve done in the past, mobilized for WW2 in much less time. If we do not get off fossil fuel there will not be much of a world left.
Really?
Yup
Rubbish
pure nonsense.
The last I heard we had enough fossil fuels to last the next 100 years, beyond that it’s not going to affect me. The “greenies” don’t want fossil fuel but that’s what they charge their EVs with, they don’t want nuclear, all they want is solar that only shines 10-12 hours a day in clear weather, or wind that only blows fairly constantly along the coastline. Now if they ever get past these points and figure out how to just get their electricity “out of the wall” as our fearless leader says we’ll have the problem whipped.
Climate change has been going on for millions of years, Remember the “Ice Age”?
Well I voted with the majority (50% of the vehicles) but would have like to wait on my vote until I researched how long it took for motorized vehicles to replace the horse drawn ones. Don’t know the answer but in the Amish communities the horse is still the favored way to get around.
The only way to go electric cars will be to build many nuclear power plants all around the country to charge them which I believe the same people that want electric cars would never agree to.
Well the advocates will probably suggest we move to someplace where the sun shines 24/7 and the wind never stops blowing where ever that might be. Of course since they never think past the initial idea we’ll still be in limbo 50 years from now with the rich kids playing with their new EVs and the rest of the world living in reality.
I think the availability (or lack of it) will drive the demise of internal combustion vehicles. With the high cost of replacing a vehicle many will hang on as long as they can. Even really high fuel prices will not kill them off – an expensive tank of fuel is way less expensive than a new vehicle. “Better” to pay for a tank of fuel every so often than bite the big chunk of replacing an entire vehicle. And, don’t forget there are a lot of rural folks with no access to charging stations without driving a long way. And us rural folks are few enough in any one place to be a priority for adding charging stations (or other infrastructure).
There will STILL have to be diesel fuel to run garbage trucks, semi-trucks, bulldozers, graders, earth movers, excavators, industrial generators, combines, timber harvestors, all KINDS of tractors, freighter ships, tugboats, fishing vessels, cruise liners, trains and much, much more! What about the aviation industry, the MILITARY vehicles and planes and helicopters for gosh sakes!! We’ll never get away from fossil fuel. EVER.
I was surprised by how many people think fossil fuel will still be a major power source in 25 years. It seems many readers are not aware of vehicle mfr. trend lines in the U.S. and Europe with ALL the manufacturers going all-in on EV’s from passenger cars to trucks.
I read an industry article several years ago and the expert predicted that in 15 years people would not be able to give away used fossil fuel vehicles. The low operation/maintenance cost benefits will push many if not most buyers into EV’s well before 2047. Unfortunately, as someone else wrote, I’ll probably be extinct by the time the primitive practice of burning materials for power finally ends…
When you see the power companies start spending billions of $$ upgrading the grid then you can see the future of EVs. Until then they are rich kid toys.
Totally in agreement, another example of follow the money.
Exactly! All kinds of talk about EVs but I don’t see the necessary infrastructure support being built. We can’t keep enough electricity flowing in Texas to heat/cool our homes. How are were going to charge our vehicles?
St current new vehicle production levels 12mm to 18 mm vehicles a year with far less than 5 percent of those electric. GAS vehicles will be around for DECADES
The “primitive practice of burning” anything for power is essential to supply the electricity to recharge EV batteries. So this primitive practice will be around for a very long time.
Unless EV tech advances substantially I believe there will always be a need for fossil fueled machines. Heavy transport etc is not suited to EV usage. There will always be nines fueled by fossil fuels to run electric motors because there isn’t enough electricity to go around. Maybe another source of fuel will be found to power electric engines, say hydrogen or nuclear? The current use EV vehicles are disposable no matter you look at it. They only recharge so many times and then are useless. The cost of new batteries negates replacing them. Things are changing but new tech is coming as well
And I saw a movie in 1985 when Am Gore said the oceans will rise and Florida will cease to exist in 2020. (news flash: its still there.). Until something is developed that has the energy of hydrocarbon fuels, and can be refilled in 5 minutes or less, with a range in hundreds of miles, electric won’t be mainstream. Biofuels (biodiesel especially) will be how we get through, until we get our ‘Mister Fusion’
amen, brother. anyone remember how the world was gonna end in 2012? lololol
And many politicians, climate activists and others are building and purchasing homes within feet of the ocean’s, bays and tributaries. Go figure!
it’s not the production of EVs, it’s the energy infrastructure needed to keep them going. one day? sure, but not a chance in Hades is that gonna happen in the next 25-years. look it up and see how much land is needed to support one windmill or a solar farm. land acquisition. environmental studies. lawsuits relating to both. gonna be a slooooowwww slog. .
and how often do the windmill blades need to be replaced? at what cost? and what do we do with the old blades? what are the blades made of? same questions for the solar panels. nope, not a chance. this is not being thought out rationally. the greenies what want they want now and they’re gonna stomp their feet and scream like little kids until they get their way.
Look up the actual cost of replacing your battery in your RV. This cost will kill the used EV market.
Willing to bet that this cost will not reduce by much. By the way, a licensed tech will be doing the swap.
Until the manufacturer is forced into a common battery design, this will not change.
According to a google search:
There is a 33.7 kilowatt hours (kwh) equivalent in a gallon of gasoline.
134 billion gallons of gasoline are burned per day in the US. 134 billion x 33.7 kwh = 4515.8 billion kwh per day from gasoline.
That rounds to 4.5 billion megawatt hours (mwh) from gasoline per day.
Electric generation in the US is 10.39 billion mwh per day
The US will have to increase electricity production by 50% to replace just gasoline.
Wow, never thought of it that way 👍👍👍
No, not quite. There _is_ 33.4 kWh equivalent in a gallon of gasoline. But… your average gasoline-powered car only turns about 25% of that energy into motive power and the rest is waste heat. Some tech (like turbos, which raise compression pressure using waste heat) can help, but pretty much nobody is over ~40% in a production ICE automobile in real-world scenarios.
Anyway, point is, the thermal inefficiency of power plants is already baked into your “10.39B MWh/day” generation number but _not_ baked into your “4.5BMWh/day of gasoline” #. Consider even a best-case scenario of all ICE’s being 40% efficient (they very much are not, 20-25% is probably closer including older cars), 4.5B MWh becomes 1.8B MWh actually required to replace motive power. Add an extra 10% for transmission and storage loss and call it 2B. And that’s worst case. So it’s not as dire as all that.
given the contentious nature of our population and the ever present NIMBYs (Not-In-My-Backyard) there is no way on Earth we can possibly construct the infrastructure needed to supply the electrical energy for the hundreds of thousands of charging stations needed to support the millions of electric vehicles the greenies envision. and just how are we going to power those charging stations? solar and wind technology, in current form, can’t possibly do that. nuclear is an option but the greenies would rather freeze in the dark than go nuclear. besides, the NIMBYs will see to it that no new nuclear plants or even wind and solar farms will have a tough slog. us? we are “all-of-the-above” people but for the forseeable future we will be dependent on fossil fuels and it would be in our own best and national security interest to re-engage our domestic fossil fuel industries. now!
The new Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia is scheduled to come on line in 2023, 7 years beyond schedule due to regulations and a cost of 30 billion + dollars for approximately 1,111 mega watts. This is extremely expensive power considering both build and operating cost is extremely high. Exelon closed 3 Mile Island unit 1 in 2019 due to being non competitive on mega watt price. 3 Mile Island unit 2 melted down on March 28,1979. All used fuel rods are still stored on site as those also at every nuclear plant in the U.S. due to the government having no central repository. Nuclear power is now being considered as green power! Yea, right!
Most people can’t afford to buy a new electric vehicle nor the $20,000 to replace the battery in a used one.
When people realize that you must rape planet earth mining materials for batteries we will come to our senses.
Yes, I’d rather see oil pumps or fracking pumps dot the landscape than vast open pit mines all over the world. Until we find another source/system to efficiently store massive amounts of power and solar energy that is collected and converted, EV’s will be nothing more than a novelty.
The EV industry will be like the RV industry: build the vehicles, collect the money, but do nothing to provide continued support.
The costs of battery manufacture, replacement, and recycling plus the range limits and power grid issues are major. These are only some of the issues with EVs. Unless workable solutions are developed to address these problems, I doubt the internal combustion engine can be completely abandoned.
As a follow-up to my previous comment, the European Union last Thursday agreed to stop ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle mfg. in 2035. That means in just 13 years only EV’s will be available there and U.S. mfrs. will not cede EV leadership so you can bet they will redouble their efforts (GM has already announced the end of their ICE mfg.) so we can see the light at the end of the smoke-filled tunnel.
What we know today about EV’s, batteries, and hauling capacities I don’t see large diesel trucks being phased out for a very, very long time. Personal car and trucks is a different story. Diesel motorhomes, who knows if they would allow us to buy fuel.
Well, either they’ll be gone, or we’ll be gone.
Just look at the Colorado & Mississippi Rivers, we can’t keep putting carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
I’ll be gone in just a few years, but my children, grand-children & great grand-children are looking to us to take control of what is happening NOW!
This is not a political rant, it is a logical rant.
When looking at the Colorado river please keep in mind the amount of water that is sucked off it and it’s tributaries for crops, drinking water and also to water all the vegetation that people have around their homes in the desert regions. For many years there was very little water left in the Colorado entering Mexico from the Yuma area. The Imperial Dam north of Yuma was built solely for drinking water for the Southern California area. At this time I can’t comment on the Mississippi
Considering I am currently driving a 25-year-old Honda…
yes, there will still be gas/diesel vehicles on our roads 25 years from now.
But most vehicles will not be gas or diesel ICE. Perhaps 10% to 20% of total traffic volume will be gas or diesel.
Ironically, that will also mean, because of reduced demand, gasoline and diesel fuel pre-taxed prices will not be as bad as many fear.
Just so many reasons electric vehicles will not be mainstream, Elon needs to go to Mars!
On an “Electric space rocket”
Hydrogen is the way to go but needs more time and technology, electric cars are only environmentally friendly for fools that know nothing of which they talk,and silly politicians who will promise anything and deliver nothing. A LARGE Meteorite is coming anyways so nothing to worry about.
IDK … With the current EV technology, no way. But 25yrs is a long time. Who knows what the next gen engine power will be?
Battery Electric is not sustainable or even feasible in it’s current model .
There is NOTHING even on the horizon to replace semi trucks, trains, cargo & cruise ships, planes (and RV’s). Get real people! In this question those are all vehicles ..
I went with 1/4, but I may as well have used a blind draw to pick. I cannot predict if other states will follow California (I hope not), or at what rate if they do follow. Battery technogy must continue to advance as both a way of powering cars, but also preserving electricity produced by ways the same cadre of people demand — solar and wind. Absent that, then polution merely goes from diffused (from many fossil-fueled vehicles) to concentrated (from large power plants with the exception of hydro plants).
Until they invent a Mr. Fusion to power vehicles we will be using petroleum based fuels. The electrical grid just isn’t robust enough to support all the charging stations that would be required. You need look no further than California this summer when the heat was on, they had to tell people not to charge their EV’s because of the strain that the AC units were putting on the grid! I find it amazing how many people don’t know where their electrical power comes from, it’s not from solar and wind!
After over a decade working with the vehicle electrification industry, my opinion is that we need a major upgrade in technologies in order to bring electric vehicles above the level of “speciality vehicle”.
The power density of fossil fuel is greater and so much more portable than anything else currently available on the planet. Until we come up with something better, electric vehicles will only be useful in limited applications.
Example: Local dairy products distribution company was mandated under CA regulations to replace Class 8 delivery trucks with electric trucks. The results: Two electric trucks are required for the replacement of each diesel powered truck. This was due to the limited range of the loaded electric truck, and corresponding required recharging times. This requires not only doubling the size of the distribution fleet, but twice the amount of drivers. Resulting in an increase in operating costs outweighing the fuel savings. Not to mention increased traffic etc.
The majority of our country is spacious. Electric can not be available in the majority of the country, nor will the grid be upgraded enough to handle even city vehicles.
IMHO, we’ll need to use all forms of power. Electric, wind, solar, coal, nuclear, hydro and fossil fuel should all be used. Using one form of power is like “putting all your eggs in one basket”. Murphy’s law will always prevail causing the “one” power source used to fail at some point. We need to consider having all power sources used to some degree for our everyday living needs. This way, no one power source would be depleted from our everyday power requirements. The infrastructure for electric vehicles will never be built to support the world’s requirements. Fossil fuel will eventually run dry, droughts will reduce water supplies, coal and fossil fuels pollute our atmosphere, nuclear energy can have devastating accidents. We need leaders in this country who understand our power needs and who will look at the WHOLE PICTURE and make commonsense decisions to help keep our country running.
While I don’t believe that gas and diesel vehicles are going to be discontinued that soon, authorities on electric vehicles such as Michael Fallquist can probably attest to the notion that EVs are on the rise.
Gas and Diesel will still be around for a few more decades. Gradually, as the technology improves and the infrastructure to provide electricity becomes more robust, we will see more electric vehicles. It will not happen overnight!
We were in Texas for the big freeze a couple of years back. One of the biggest factors in the power failure was that much of their power is from wind and solar. The solar panels got snow covered and the wind generators froze up.