Neil, you have just shown, with a lot of false assumptions though but shown, that production follows demand.
Yes it does. Absolutely. It takes decades to ramp up the capacity of a national grid and we have been ramping it down for decades. Our transition to renewable has been in that mould where we have removed Coal and replaced it with renewable energy at a lower capacity.
I am forgetting nothing.
I am fully aware that in order to have a smooth transition to electrically fuelled vehicles, someone needs to be planning for the long term on the infrastructure.
Otherwise the public will vote in governments that roll back on the progress we have already achieved.
I am not saying we can't, absolutely not. What I am saying is that we are not and it is the consumer who will suffer.
You talk about wind and solar as if it is the fix for everything! So, tell me, please do, just how you are going to charge all those short range EV batteries at night when the country is experiencing virtually no wind power generation, for a Week?
Right now the best potential storage facility for over produced renewable is hydrogen but that is not really on anybodies radar.
You cannot just tell me that supply follows demand when the basis of that supply is not feasible at our current level of maturity.
For charging points, we will have to roll out multiple gigawatt power supplies to motorway service stations, car parks and companies who use fleet vehicles. Literally millions of points with rapid and extensive extension of the grid. The infrastructure doesn't exist and to make it exist will take a few trillion € EU wide. All for a transport network which will return less revenue to governments and less profits than current FF.
All of that needs to be addressed before we can even think about moving more than 30% of our existing vehicles on the road to EV.
I do not see it happening on that scale. The work is simply not in progress.
Supply may follow demand, but if you cannot charge your vehicle to get to work, then you are not going to demand.
Public perception is a very fragile thing and charging forward without an integrated plan will not help with that. It is great for initial production of the solution, but after that, it requires state level action and the states are not acting. Not yet.
We are not in the situation with AGW where we can afford to make simple basic mistakes which slow or stop the transition from FF vehicles.
One of my daughters was considering an EV. I discussed the pro's and con's with her and sent her off to do some research. She cannot charge at home, it is not possible, she cannot charge at work, there is no infrastructure there. She cannot charge at the local supermarket because there are no points, she would have to charge twice a day (for her chosen 114 mile EV) and she goes to the supermarket once a week. Charging Infrastructure on the way to work? 5 chargers, one half way, one 3/4 of the way and three within 5 miles of work. All 7kw or less.
So my daughter would have to take about 4 hours out of her day, every working day, to get the Benefit of an EV.
Demand just died! She bought a Ford Eco Sport, 660 mile range, fills up once a week in 5 minutes.
Reality is a bitch but it is reality.
