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The average age of a car in the US is 12 years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/261877/average-age-of-pa...

I appreciate your courage. 30 years is a short time when many cars have a far higher lifespan plus for you to win this bet it would mean that US car sales are 100% electric in probably something like 10 years.



There is going to be a tipping point where things will start to change much quicker.

#1 Price of EVs is going down fast and will continue to decline as the price and weight of batteries drops.

#2 As vehicles on the road shifts to EVs, gas stations will become less and less profitable and the number of gas stations will decline, slowly at first, then very quickly in areas where land values are high and there are more profitable uses for land.

#3 As the number of gas stations decline, the single biggest advantage of ICE vehicles melts away and the fact that EVs are charged at home will become increasingly appealing. Gas stations will be around for a long time, but they will be increasingly scarce.

Obviously, we're nowhere close to the above happening now, but if 50% of cars sold are EV, the economics around ICE vehicles will change massively. There are a lot of other bits here too, ICE vehicles require lots of maintenance and dealerships will start to struggle as well with lower sales.

This is going to happen slowly at first, then it is going to happen very quickly once the economics and benefits of owning gas powered cars starts to break down.


I agree with your first 2 points, but the thing which I can't wrap my head around is point 3. The ability to run a cable from your home to your car will always be a physical impossibility for millions of car owners.

From what I can tell the idea of battery swapping stations seems to be dead in the water. And I seem to remember that 15 miles minute of charging is where we are (numbers might be old), meaning many more visits to third party charging stations and each visit taking longer than a liquid fuel pump.

I'd love an electric car, but without a private driveway for personal infrastructure, it just doesn't make sense until the third party infrastructure is ubiquitous or there are huge gains in charge speed, or both. I see the odd one in random places: private underground car parks, KFC, odd hotel car park, but these can only cater to the enthusiast who can also charge at home. Hopefully I'll be wrong sooner rather than later.


This is the main thing holding me back from going electric. I live in a metropolitan area, I park on the street. There's no way for me to get electricity to my car... and there's not a chance in hell I'm fucking around at a charging station for 2 hours in the middle of a commute.

Gas stations also aren't going anywhere. The average age of a car in the US is 12 years old. That means that, even if today we switched to only selling 100% electric cars off the lots, we're looking at 12 years (!) before 50% (!) of the cars on the road are electric. Finally, the current trend of free-or-almost-free charging stations is going to go away very quickly once electric cars become more mainstream -- I wouldn't be surprised if a "charge" ended up costing about as much as a tank of gas. This kills one of the main arguments for going electric in the first place.


I appreciate the kind works, but this is for my kids. Don't mistake desperation for them to have a future for courage. Climate change is going to impact everyone.




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