I'm a sort of fan of electric vehicles so long as I don't have to get one for some years down the road. Right now, I think the prices are inflated, both because of inflation, and because the manufacturers haven't gotten to the economy of scaling up yet.
Charging stations are still sparse, and some don't charge all vehicles. Home charging without a locked garage is problematical.
I'm glad to see American (U.S.) auto manufacturers have committed to the market. Eventually, I think this will produce cars that are both high quality and competitively priced. Right now they are rich peoples' vehicles.
Someone will be the Henry Ford of electric cars and bring them home to working families. I don't think it will be Elon Musk.
As a historical note, my great aunts, sisters, owned a Studebaker Electric back in the late nineteen-teens and twenties. These were town cars, since there weren't charging stations in the countryside. And they were pitched to women who didn't want to risk cranking a gasoline engine which did tend to break peoples' wrists and forearms.
Because of the customer base, mostly women in prosperous homes, the electric cars had interiors reminiscent of a pleasant home parlor, with little tasseled pull shades and plump upholstered seats. Some of the EV's were steered with a tiller rather than a wheel. Everything old is new again.
Why are gasoline cars going to die?
It takes XX amount of energy to move a 3,000 pound car a mile down the road.
Until very recently gasoline has enjoyed the advantage that a 6 pound gallon of gasoline will send my 4.200 pound Hemi Chrysler over 25 miles down the freeway.
It will propel a little car much further.
As much as I just worship my Chrysler 300S, as excellent as it is, the sticker price in 2012 was $40,000, a new replacement is $50,000 (if you can find one) and after about 10,000 hours of operation, no matter how careful I drive, it’s scrap metal.
In the ten years I’ve owned my Chrysler the wholesale price of lithium ion battery packs has dropped about 90%.
Electric companies can now build a wind turbine to produce electricity at a profit that sells for 10 cents a kilowatt hour.
The electricity cost today to run a nice, big, comfortable electric car is three or four cents a mile.
Two things have held back electric cars (other than us old men afraid of progress, as old men have always been afraid of progress) which have been the cost of the car, and limited range.
My fathers big block 1965 Galaxie had to stop to drink at a gas station about every 160 miles or two hours at 80 mph. Modern electrics all go 200 miles at least before a 30 minute fast recharge will put them back on the road for another 200 miles.
$30,000 medium size electric cars will be on the market next year.
And as for power, there’s no comparison.
Your next electric car will outrun a Hellcat.