Electrifying vehicles at a mass scale actually has a lot of problems, not the least of which is does the grid support the ability to transmit that much power. In many places it does not.
That aside, electrifying vehicles doesn't necessarily reduce emissions significantly. It may simply shift the emissions from individual vehicles to the power plant that produces the power that charges the cars.
Now this is nearly always a net positive: large-scale fossil-fuel burning power generation is pretty much always more efficient (even accounting for transmission power loss) but the point is that emissions don't go to zero.
Another interesting thought: the price of gasoline acts as a barrier to vehicle usage to some degree. As in, knowing you have to spend $50 to fill up the tank affects your behaviour to varying degrees. Well with electric vehicles depending on where you live that marginal cost might be <$5 per tank-equivalent of range.
I wonder if that means that with a fully electrified vehicle fleet, people will end up driving more because of the lower marginal costs.
I remember when EVs where a pointless toy for rich people to flaunt their wealth, now they're causing problems by letting poor people drive more. That's some remarkble progress they've made while still somehow remaining vaguely problematic.
Grid stress in the first world isn't a big problem since electric vehicles can charge when the grid is under less pressure. The demand curve over a day has a reasonably predictable shape and EV charging can often be done when wholesale prices are low. Of course we will need to increase capacity, but that can be done over time.
Fossil power to generate electricity that then powers your car is less carbon intensive than just using an internal combustion engine. The overhead of getting oil out of the ground, refining it and transporting it is big. You then lose lots of energy as heat as you run your engine.
> people will end up driving more because of the lower marginal costs.
I suspect places will have to move to either London-style congestion charges or milage-based road taxes to offset this. With an admittedly big loss of privacy, you could even price at the level of individual roads and put Uber-style surge pricing on the roads themselves.
Another possibility is that the "markets in everything" self-driving companies win and cars become a capital asset that can work itself. No reason to drive your car around uselessly if you can rent it out instead, and in theory this could result in fewer cars. However I'm skeptical.
Average US driver goes 13.5kmi/year. This is about 36mi/ day. Most cars will get 2-4 mi/kWh, so this is about 12kWh/day. Average charging of like 8 hours gives about 1.5 kW over night. This isn't nothing, but it's a bunch less than people think about. I was regularly driving off of what a standard 120v socket would supply. (Not right now, because I can no longer charge overnight, due to a recall)
Also grid power can become more green if more green sources come online, but your gas powered car will always be gas powered.
That aside, electrifying vehicles doesn't necessarily reduce emissions significantly. It may simply shift the emissions from individual vehicles to the power plant that produces the power that charges the cars.
Now this is nearly always a net positive: large-scale fossil-fuel burning power generation is pretty much always more efficient (even accounting for transmission power loss) but the point is that emissions don't go to zero.
Another interesting thought: the price of gasoline acts as a barrier to vehicle usage to some degree. As in, knowing you have to spend $50 to fill up the tank affects your behaviour to varying degrees. Well with electric vehicles depending on where you live that marginal cost might be <$5 per tank-equivalent of range.
I wonder if that means that with a fully electrified vehicle fleet, people will end up driving more because of the lower marginal costs.