EVs are inconvenient especially for businesses, and as you alluded to above fragile and unsellable when they age.
Time is money; businesses will not be happy about their employees idling for twenty minutes or an hour while their vehicle charges, even if early adopter owners are blind to this issue.
Damage that would be minor on a legacy car, and easily repairable, sometimes causes an EV to be written off because it cannot be determined whether or not the battery pack has been damaged. Besides increased cost of repairs, the increased writeoff frequency increases insurance cost.
Consider the mass market, people who habitually buy five to ten year old vehicles. Would you buy a ten year old EV, even if the battery diagnostics say "yes, all good"?
This is the reason leasing an EV for five years requires a higher monthly payment than leasing it for four years. The residual value falls off a cliff after year four.
There is a solution to all these, and to the high upfront cost as well. The problem is we can't get there from here.
The solution is standardised battery swapping. Every gas station becomes a battery swap station. Specialist owners own, maintain and charge the batteries; car owners do not own them but pay for them over their life in battery swap charges.
So the comparison to VHS vs Beta is apt. Sony killed Beta by insisting on high licencing charges and other implementation barriers.
Also, the usual reaction to the "standardised battery swap" approach is "but consumers would balk at paying such high costs to 'refuel'!". That reveals the true cost of EVs.
(Smith and his ilk are victims of egocentric bias, and probably other cognitive biases too. Edit: also, lazy. Anyone with Smith's education, on being given an average, should be saying, "yes, but what are the mode, median and range? What are the variance, skew, and kurtosis? What does the distribution look like, and is it different for different subpopulations?" But none of that happens, so one has to suspect a snow job.)
I think there is a market for detachable range extender engines. I don't see why a driver should bother carrying an engine if they only use it twice a year. The hybrid car batteries are also very slow to charge relative to normal EVs. Plus you can share your range extender with your neighbours.
EVs are inconvenient especially for businesses, and as you alluded to above fragile and unsellable when they age.
Time is money; businesses will not be happy about their employees idling for twenty minutes or an hour while their vehicle charges, even if early adopter owners are blind to this issue.
Damage that would be minor on a legacy car, and easily repairable, sometimes causes an EV to be written off because it cannot be determined whether or not the battery pack has been damaged. Besides increased cost of repairs, the increased writeoff frequency increases insurance cost.
Consider the mass market, people who habitually buy five to ten year old vehicles. Would you buy a ten year old EV, even if the battery diagnostics say "yes, all good"?
This is the reason leasing an EV for five years requires a higher monthly payment than leasing it for four years. The residual value falls off a cliff after year four.
There is a solution to all these, and to the high upfront cost as well. The problem is we can't get there from here.
The solution is standardised battery swapping. Every gas station becomes a battery swap station. Specialist owners own, maintain and charge the batteries; car owners do not own them but pay for them over their life in battery swap charges.
So the comparison to VHS vs Beta is apt. Sony killed Beta by insisting on high licencing charges and other implementation barriers.
Also, the usual reaction to the "standardised battery swap" approach is "but consumers would balk at paying such high costs to 'refuel'!". That reveals the true cost of EVs.
(Smith and his ilk are victims of egocentric bias, and probably other cognitive biases too. Edit: also, lazy. Anyone with Smith's education, on being given an average, should be saying, "yes, but what are the mode, median and range? What are the variance, skew, and kurtosis? What does the distribution look like, and is it different for different subpopulations?" But none of that happens, so one has to suspect a snow job.)
I think there is a market for detachable range extender engines. I don't see why a driver should bother carrying an engine if they only use it twice a year. The hybrid car batteries are also very slow to charge relative to normal EVs. Plus you can share your range extender with your neighbours.
I would personally recommend micro gas turbines.
https://youtu.be/f2VFRAdzLK0
This is a great point. Range extenders would make EVs much more viable. Thanks for the link. I hadn't seen the portable gas generators before.
They have been around since the early 2010s. They're a relatively mature technology. Many manufacturers around the world especially in Japan.
I don't think EV depreciation is due to the battery. It's because of two reasons -
1) There was a massive in drop EV prices in recent years, reducing the trade-off in buying a new EV instead of a second hand one.
2) EVs are still considered to be premium cars. Premium cars always depreciate faster.
Good points.