More on the EV Adoption Curve

Here’s a continuation of my conversation with a reader on the EV adoption curve, where he writes:

You are so right.  Maintenance is an issue if you decide to own your car for a long, long time.  But with a 4-year payback, the Focus will probably get by on just oil changes and some light maintenance. Leaf offers a 3-year $349/month lease with $1,999 down.  So maybe a 3-year payback is necessary.

Fast charging is not a solution to anything.  Fast chargers are very expensive and will never pay back ever.  With electricity at 10 cents per kWh, they just don’t make sense…take a 100A at 240 VAC – 24kW, now you charge for 30 minutes = you use 12kWh times 10 cents = $1.20. Not much there for anyone.

Will EV costs come down? Maybe but very, very slowly.  The big OEM’s do not want them. PERIOD! If GM was not lead by Obama’s appointees, the Volt would be facing the same issues EV1 did. Nothing has changed.  Gas at $4 per gallon is still too cheap for all the bad things that come out of it.

Americans are wasteful and stupid. Nobody cares about today much less tomorrow. Washington DC is made up of crooks and lawyers who believe you are not guilty of anything until you are caught and dragged into court and finally found guilty. That is why they are so dishonest and untrustworthy.　 With a whopping 15% approval rating, what else can we think. Do you really think any of them care about a US Energy Policy? Obama’s speech last week was mostly BS. Every President has said the same thing over the last 50 years and nothing has changed to reduce our increasing demand for oil.  Sure we are concerned about our National Security but what has anybody done? Nothing.  Washington is waiting for us the hit a wall or fall off some cliff before they have no choice but to act. But it will be too late at that point.

The US census found 25M households with 3 or more cars!

I reply:

I agree with most of this.

Re: fast-charging, the business model has yet to be worked out. I have to think that profitable businesses will emerge in this space a few decades from now when we have tens of millions of EVs on the roads (on the way to hundreds of millions). It does create an interesting problem, since, unlike the distribution of gas and diesel, most of the fuel for EVs is delivered at home, with more available at the workplace, shopping malls, etc.

You’re correct that the OEMs don’t want EVs, but their backs are up against the wall, driven by competitors — all of which are vigorously developing EV platforms — for a customer base that they (and I) believe will be there. In addition to Nissan and GM, you have Ford, Mitsubishi, BMW, Honda, Toyota — not to mention the start-ups — all running hard to sell into what they feel will be a robust consumer market. As you pointed out, there are 25 million households that represent “low-hanging fruit,” and I believe a very big chunk of those are going to want a car like the LEAF.