Comments by "Nigel Johnson" (@nigeljohnson9820) on "How electric cars are dominating the Geneva Motor Show" video.

The technology is still not ready to replace fossil fuels, batteries do not offer the energy density. They take age to charge, are expensive and have a limited working life. It is questionable how many countries have the generating capacity and infrastructure to support all electric vehicles.
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@mcamodell there are a number examples where the network is rolled out before the application, consider 5G, even the original electricity supply came before the devices it supplied. The assertion that not 10% of journeys are greater than 60 miles, ignores a number of fundamental problems. The journeys made by commercial vehicles, which are generally the most polluting and at greater than 60 miles. Then there is the matter of the very few electric vehicles on the road at the moment, while the network might be able to cope with this load, iris questionable if it can support the replacement of all vehicles to some form of battery power. It is proposed that rapid charging points will require local industrial battery storage to deliver the fast charging current. It is questionable if the network has the capacity to deliver the average current needed to recharge these batteries. The energy density of the current generation of vehicle batteries is no where near approaching that of fossil fuels, making a direct transition to electric technology impossible. Basically the battery technology is not ready, despite what the politicians would like the public to believe. Your 80 mile capacity of current generation of car batteries is optimistic, not taking into account their aging characteristics.
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I do not doubt that the future is electric but the technology is not ready yet. The only reason the car manufactures are "on board" is because of political pressure not the pressure of a new technology. I do not think the conversion of all vehicles to electric operation will result in grid rebalancing, the increase in load is too great. At the moment the percentage of electric vehicles is sub 2%, a long way from the 100% future. To rapidly charge a car, requires more power than can currently be delivered by the existing distribution system. The proposed solution is to build industrial battery storage banks at filling stations to provide the current necessary. These then need to be slowly recharged from the grid at a current the distribution system can provide. The efficiency of electric cars is apprixmatly three time that of petrol cars, but nowhere near the efficiency you are quoting. The best figures are about 62%. This as yet, does not make up for the deficit in the energy capacity of the fuel. Then there is the little matter of the life endurance of the current generation of batteries. Not only is this relatively short, they capacity fades over time. So while a new car might provide 300 miles between charges, this is not the case for a five year old car, and the battery will most likely need to be replaced after as little as 10 years. These figures are approximate because the figures are improving rapidly, but who wants to be an early adopter, stuck with an old generation of battery. Unfortunately this technology does not allow for battery upgrades, as each new battery technology demands different electronics to support it. Electric car races have just started, it is telling that these cars can only race for about half an hour before they must stop to be recharged, even with induction charging during the race. Such is the stress on these cars, they are effectively rebuilt after each short race. When the electric race cars can compete on endurance with traditional race cars, then the electric technology will be a viable replacement.
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@philterry3293 there is a difference between proof of concept and a practical solution. The reason cars sales has fallen, is because the public are not willing to be early adopter guinea pigs, who will be forced to pay the costs of blind alley technologies. This is re-enforced by the way the public has been treated after they were encouraged to buy diesel cars. Add to this the speed control technology the EU want to introduce and most are holding on to their existing vehicles.
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@philterry3293 are you deliberately being obtuse. I am saying the technology is not ready yet for the mass replacement of fossil fuels. I am also saying that today's electric technology is unlikely to be the one we finally end up using. It's a bit like the battle between the different TV recording systems and competing standards. But if you want to be an early adopter be my guest, just hope you do not chose the video 2000 version. I am also saying that there needs to be significant upgrades to the power generation and distribution system to make it suitable for mass adoption of electric vehicles, including HGV.
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