The fact that they are simply better than the alternative in multiple dimensions has rapidly accelerated the transition.
It's kick started an arms race in battery production that's already delivered cheap batteries suitable for bikes, busses, large trucks and now flight, which will in turn be a leap forward for cars.
Meanwhile, the amount of batteries available for integrating renewables is turning into a surge, which lets us roll out more and cheaper renewables.
It's multiple, positive, reinforcing cycles even before you get to the reduction in local pollution, less brake dust, the ability to produce smaller cars, solar roofs, longer lasting vehicles, and a bunch of other good stuff.
I have to say, that is a lot of cars. Hope they succeed. I want evs to start to be seriously pursued by 'existing' ;-) auto makers but it's been a slow slog.
The big story is the electric vehicle revolution is finally starting to really take off. Thanks to rapidly falling battery prices, EV's will be as cheap as ISE's for the largest cars starting around 2023, and for successively smaller ones in the following years. In addition governments all over the world are pushing EV adoption with many sorts of measures.
In the last year the big car companies have finally realized this, and that they are in danger of going bankrupt if they get left behind, and so they are seriously getting behind making EV's. To give one outstanding example VW has signed contracts for 48 billion dollars worth of batteries.
I am encouraged by the progress made so far. I point to the documentary "Who Killed [GMs] EV-1?". That movie had a laundry list of the technological and political obstacles to EVs in the 1990s. Many of those have been reduced in the 2010s.
Yeah, EVs are the minimum possible change that at first glance looks like it might work, of course without disturbing the global capitalist system or our cultural values.
Wow, people are going to be pissed off in thirty years. "Why didn't that fix it all? We have to do more?"
5 years ago major automakers didn't have full lineups of EVs already in production. Now they have, it's heavy industry, not tech, things take a while to R&D and ramp-up to full-scale production. Now there is full-scale production from multiple manufacturers, it only gets easier from here, maybe another 5 years is a good waiting time to see clear trends emerging.
It's not going to be a revolution despite all the EV bull market folks say, it will be an orderly transition, people are slow to change and adapt and STEM people should accept that. Electric cars are not in any way an order of magnitude upgrade in tech, which is a necessary trait for any technology that claims to be disruptive. Sure from a green perspective it is but not from a pragmatic one. I of course welcome the change. :)
Very few people know that electric vehicles had already been built well over 120 years ago! Attempts to re-establish them were always suppressed by different industries several times, but this time, it seems inevitable.
The lip service was in an era of small-m millions for EV investment.
The past 3-4 years have seen capital-B Billions of investment from most of the major automakers. Some are more aggressive than others, but they're all genuinely starting. Money talks.
Obviously Tesla was first, but Renault, Kia, and Hyundai are producing EVs in earnest. VW is starting to ramp up this year. About a dozen companies will kick in over the next couple years.
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.
Everyone else in detroit and japan are trying to catch up on the bandwagon of electric cars. That is revolutionary for the industry atleast. In the long run, weather he is able to revolutionize mobility is yet to be seen.
However, part of the perception that EV cars are almost here is caused by people having gotten used to the blistering pace of innovation in IT. Batteries to heavy? Mwah, "wait a few years and it will be good enough".
In reality, if you look at the weight/power density curve of batteries it has been improving at a pace that 10 times slower than what happened in IT. So it may take decades more to get where we need to be. Just trying to be realistic here.
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