There are 10 Biggest Problems With Electric Cars...
But the first alone would be enough
A post on Medium describes ten fundamental problems with battery electric vehicle (BEVs) as a leading climate change mitigation option.
Here, I argue that the first problem is the biggest, and that it should be too much for the industry, even if it were the only one.
The FIRST problem with electric cars is that they are still cars
Almost all the main investments and public policies about cars worldwide are based on the more or less implicit dogma that private cars can, must and will remain the dominant mode of personal transportation. BEVs get so much exposure and money because they are the least complicated way to respect that dogma. But…
To begin with, it makes no sense to expect that BEVs could replace cars as quickly as “normal” cars replaced carts and horses.
That happened because cars were objectively better than horses in many ways. But BEVs are still just cars. In any REAL WORLD scenario, cars will never eliminate traffic, save you money, move you faster or find parking spots more quickly just by being electric.
The only way to make those things happen for real, for everybody, in our lifetimes is what that post calls “the twin forces of virtual mobility and human-oriented city design”.
In order to make cars work for us it is necessary on one hand to (re)build work and supply chains, not just cities as that posts says, in ways that “fully exploit the emerging virtual mobility solutions” and minimize idiotic long distance trade.
On the other hand, it is necessary to make cities as similar as possible to the right side of this picture:
To replace, that is, car-filled streets with walkways, cycle paths, green areas, and services within easy walking/cycling distance.
Or, as final quote from that post: “indeed, a global transition to human-friendly cities will take care of all the problems BEVs aspire to solve as well as many much more severe problems they never can."
About the other nine problems…
Problems 6 and 7 of that list are “Material Intensity and Waste” and, respectively, “Low Compatibility With Wind and Solar”. I briefly covered those problems in the posts listed below, but the whole piece, albeit possibly behind paywall, covers much more and is pretty good!