I agree with most of this except the last paragraph - "you won’t be unwittingly paying for blood minerals." Sure it's a problem, but it's being actively addressed. Petroleum's extremely rich and complex history has many dark sides too. Also, I don't own an EV so I may be wrong, but I don't believe ICE cars "terrifically convenient" when you can charge at home the vast majority of the time and not worry about oil changes.
Color me skeptical that anything real will be done about it. We haven't even managed to solve the same issue when it comes to things like IC manufacturing, clothing manufacturing, food production, etc., and they have been around a whole lot longer.
Mass scale EVs will be lfp (no cobalt nickel) and sodium ion (not even lithium)
Blood minerals will be for luxury uktralong range, etc. And even that is being addressed. And if sulfur chemistries hit production or solid state, look out
>but I don't believe ICE cars "terrifically convenient" when you can charge at home the vast majority of the time
The nice thing about market activity is that we each have the power to make decisions about what is convenient. Upgrading the electrical service at my house to support charging would cost about as much as all the gas I've put into my car in the last 10 years. And about 1/4 of those miles are cross country (US) drives, where a charger at home wouldn't have done any good.
I wonder how many people do not have access to an outlet to charge overnight at their home....
I have been parking on the street or in a carport for almost a decade. I'm not sure my cleaning lady, gardener, pest control guy, dental hygienist, taco truck owner, mail carriers, etc. have anywhere they can park overnight and charge a vehicle.
I live in a 5 year old apt building in seattle. Currently nearly half the spaces in the parking garage have chargers. So builders are either listening to their clientele or perhaps regulations are forcing their hands.
This is just a transitory timeframe. When gas cars were hitting the road there wasn't magically a gas station on every corner and a mechanic in every town. Just like always it's a bit of 'build it and they will come' and 'hurry up and build it already'.
Hell at my office there is already conversations happening with the building about providing power into the bicycle cage to top off e-bikes.
I could see this in new apartment buildings (at least the more expensive ones), but most apartment buildings aren't so new. With most of the existing ones I see around, adding chargers would be crazy expensive because you'd have to do a lot of concrete/asphalt work in order to install them. I don't see that happening except in the swankier buildings who have a budget.
I'm in the same boat. It's a bit nuanced actually - I do have a 120v plug available near a spot, and I only drive at most 40 miles, so it's definitely doable, although I think charging from 240v is more efficient overall? My HOA is also interested in adding a charger and the nice thing is due to modern industrial design asthetic, they're cool with the conduits/wires showing as long as they're color matched, which makes it much easier in an open lot.
Now trying to convince them to cover it with solar panels would be nice for my car :)
I understand it is currently hard, but apartment buildings are concentrated housing and parking. What is economically harder: electrify 1000 homes for EVs or 1000 people in a building?
Sounds like incentivicing apartment buildings ev infra is a regularatory shortfall.
It depends on how you're measuring "hard". In the case of apartment buildings, you could argue that's harder because it's one entity that has to pay for 1000 installations. In homes, each entity has to pay for a single installation.
The cost of 1000 installations is extreme (especially if you have to tear up concrete and asphalt). Certainly more than any but perhaps higher-income housing can, or will, afford.
That's also not really what happens. Voters have very little input on any of these rules even though their daily life will essentially be dictated by it.
> The current rules require automakers to average 49 miles per gallon (MPG) per vehicle, across their fleets, by 2026.
I suppose your f-150 style trucks and SUV fleets don't have to meet this standard (I think the 2023 f-150 is 26mpg, the 2023 Escape is 31mpg) perhaps being classified as 'work vehicles'. Given how many of these I see in personal use I feel like this loophole must be closed. Perhaps personal cars that do not meet the standard need some kind of per mile tax.
This is, literally, propaganda from the petroleum industry,
constructed entirely by someone paid to dress up their tooth-and-nail fight-to-the-death commitment to sunk cost investment and Teh Way of Life in the "sober, just asking questions" tone of a old rich white guy.
The fact that people can't even detect this extremely obvious propaganda (let alone downvote when it's pointed out to them) is a troubling sign of declining critical thinking faculty.
