Wow, there are a lot of bad assumptions here.
When you say 'homes' you mean peoples who live a house with private garage or driveway.
However 'the vast majority of people' in younger age and at the beginning of their active live,
generally live in apartments and park in the streets.
...and generally don't buy brand new $50,000+ cars! Jeez. Most of car sales in the U.S. every year are
used cars. Guess what young people first starting out are going to be buying? Yeah--it's not a $50,000 car. It's more like a $5,000 car. So no, they probably won't be the people buying new electric cars and needing charging.
You cannot limit the access to electric cars to
Oh, really? "You" cannot? It's more like economic realities doing the limiting; not
@SSedan . But anyway...
You cannot limit the access to electric cars to only affluent people who live in houses, otherwise the production of EVs will plateau,
and no progress will be made to transition from the archaic and polluting fossil technology to cleaner EV transportation.
It might plateau, huh? Did you know that over half of the residences in the United States are "single family detached dwellings"? In other words--regular houses--not condos or apartments. Gee...that would be
awful if electric cars had to "plateau" at 55% of the households in the U.S. instead of the approximately 1% of the car market they are at now. What a shame we're capped there now. There is still a ton of market share available before this is ever a problem. I guess things will just have to grow and adapt, as they naturally would over the next few decades.
I recently visited some larger US cities, and Europeans cities, and I was surprised that there was very few or almost none EVs
parked in residentials areas. The streets were full of costly luxury SUVs, so it was not the cost of EVs
Yes, that's true. Electric vehicle adoption is still fairly slow. There are probably some reasons for it.
but the lack of charging infrastructure blocking the spread of clean electric cars.
Well that is a huge leaping assumption with no evidence. It could be a different reason. How about these other possibilities?
(1) Lack of choice--Up until very recently there have been dinky low range compliance EVs or 3X+ the price for a Tesla. No other choices. It is just in the past year or two that there have been ANY other 200+ mile range semi-practical EVs to even consider. There are certain brands that people like or dislike to do business with, and most of the car brands just don't have a decent electric car yet.
(2) Lack of buying time--since decent EVs have just become available in the past year or so, why do you assume that absolutely everyone has bought a car within this past year and should have an electric car sitting in their driveway? A lot of people have bought those vehicles in the last 3-4 years and may still be about 4-5 years away from replacing them.
(3) Lack of seeing/inventory--People buy cars from car lots. That's what they are used to. They go there and look around sometimes to see what's out there. Maybe they know someone who works at a dealership, so they hear about the current models of what they have. Well, it's well known that most auto dealerships HATE electric cars and won't stock them and won't talk about them and won't show them to people. So how are people going to find out about them to try to buy? They will buy something the salespeople are showing them.
(4) Lack of advertising--Have you seen any commercials for an electric car? Maybe? Per each commercial for an electric car, how many hundreds of commercials for gas cars? People's buying habits are influenced by ads, despite their protests otherwise. You don't see electric car commercials, you don't think about them, and probably won't think of it when you make an impulse car purchase on some Saturday.
(5) Lack of production--The other auto makers are only making a few thousand of their EV models per quarter, and Tesla is not up to making tens of millions of cars yet, so where would people get these cars? Again with them not being advertised and not on car lots.
(6) Inertia/fear--People stay in what is comfortable and don't like change or trying things that seem new and different. People go to the same restaurants over and over. They buy the same brand of food at the grocery store. They continue to buy the same brand of tennis shoes. They've had no complaints or problems about buying gas cars for the last few decades of their lives. It does what they expect it to do and has no surprises, so why should they try something very different that might have some unusual adjustments to it. It has things about it that they don't understand, and why should they have to learn several new things just to drive a car. I can get another Chevy, and everything will be just as comfortable as it has always been. While people are comfortable with what works, they do not feel a need to change to something different or unusual. That's just the way people are.
(7) Cost--You're saying they have fancy expensive cars, so it's not a cost issue, but it kind of is in a different way. If the U.S. would stop idiotically subsidizing the cost of gasoline, making it so artificially cheap, then maybe this could change. All-in, gasoline
should cost about $5-$6 a gallon, like the rest of the world. So operating their fancy cars should really cost more, and as long as they are being subsidized to be kept artificially low, they will not have the motivation to try something different that really should be cheaper to operate.
(8) Different lack of choice--I already mentioned about not a lot of brands having EVs. Tesla could be a good choice, but they just don't have much of a selection of vehicle types yet. They only have about 3 to choose from, and they are not that different. I know a lot of people who need to have a truck, and Tesla doesn't have one yet, so they are out. A lot of people want a big SUV, but when my wife saw the falcon wing doors of the Model X, she said, "Those are RIDICULOUS! I would never get one of those!" And the rear seat headroom in the Model S is terrible. The Model 3 may be too small for some people. So a Tesla isn't always the right choice for everyone. Different cars have different features, and people may want certain features that aren't quite there in a vehicle that's right for them yet.
(9) Fear of buying a car over the internet--This one is way outside of the comfort level for a lot of people. They don't feel very good about buying a car without the chance to sit in it, test drive it, go home and sleep on it, test drive it again, talk to the spouse about it, bring them for another test drive, etc. That's not the Tesla way, and a lot of people won't buy a car that way.
(10) Actual lack of nearby service or fear of lack of service. The nearest Tesla service center to me is still about 340 miles away. I'm OK with that, but do you know what a tough sell that is for most people?! That is quite a risk, for people to think that if their car has a problem or stops working, they could be without it for weeks. That is totally unacceptable to people. It's not very likely, but people don't like the fear of things that could go badly.
(11) Fear of buying a really big/expensive item from a "startup" company--Tesla is still considered a startup infant in the car world. I still run into plenty of people who know almost nothing about them. A lot of people think that is way too much risk to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an item from a company who hasn't established themselves and might not even be in business in a few years.
(12) FUD fears--I still see people who are not haters themselves, but they have "heard from people" that those electric cars burst into flames and are dangerous. They can electrocute you if you plug them in. They will set your house on fire. Tesla is bankrupt and about to go out of business. Etc. etc. People hear so much negative stuff about Tesla, it stokes a lot of fears and makes people unwilling to take the risk.
(13) Slower on traveling--I hear this one endlessly. Even though travel use cases are like 5-10% of people's actual driving use, you would think it's all anyone ever does. Contrary to your assertion about lack of infrastructure, even in these cases where the infrastructure IS THERE, a lot of people are unwilling to have the patience for any extra time while traveling. It is just a fact that recharging a battery can't be as fast a pumping liquid fuel, even with really good high power charging stations. It's a little tradeoff, but for many people, it's the end of the world, and they will not tolerate it. My wife's sister has vowed that she will
never get an electric car, because of the longish charging stops on the trip that they took from Boise to Portland, a route that is fully covered with Superchargers.
There. I just gave you 13 reasons that could be hindering EV adoption other than your baseless assertion that it is just because of lack of infrastructure. Open your mind a bit to other possibilities.
In large cities, we really need to install low cost charging stations everywhere where 'the vast majority of people'
who have their car parked 80% of the day could have their car plugged without needed to move their car
while working or been at home taking care of their family life.
Why do you think really large cities are where this matters? I already pointed out how over half of the households in the U.S. are regular houses. House prices are much cheaper in smaller cities and more affordable for regular people who could have home charging easily. So why do you not think that matters very much? Have you thought about the rate of car ownership per person? A lot of people who live in the center of really large cities don't even bother to own a car. They have pretty good public transit systems that are workable almost all the time, along with a little bit of taxi and/or renting a car a few times a year. In much of the smaller cities throughout most of the country, public transit is pathetic to almost nonexistent. Car ownership is practically a given for almost everyone, but home charging is pretty easily done there too, since they don't have much of the high rise condo types of situations that dense urban cities have.
Anyway, this has been interesting.
