What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
Biggest problem I guess will be expanding the charger network, simply due to physics.<p>On the country side, laying cables for 1MW peak load (4 superchargers @ 250 kW) will be expensive - the grid in rural areas is enough for some farms and small villages, that&#x27;s it.<p>In cities, electric-car chargers will have to deal with political obstacles (no one wants to sacrifice free-for-all parking spots!), in addition to the electricity problem - while in a city there might be more available 10+ kV lines (you don&#x27;t want to do 250 kW over 230V AC, it&#x27;s over 1k A current!), sidewalks are often enough very slim as it is and it will be difficult to get a charging station installed there, and digging in earth filled with cables is not exactly fun either (been there, done that, it&#x27;s manual work of the worst kind as you can&#x27;t even use a proper showel...). Getting chargers in garages will face obstacles of the HOAs, plus the house uplinks usually are without much reserves - my 12-apartment house, for example, is linked to the grid on 3x63A with each apartment (~60 m2) being fed by a single 40A phase. Not much, certainly not enough to feed even two electric cars in the backyard.<p>Either way you&#x27;l have to rebuild the <i>entire</i> grid more sooner than later if electric cars should have a future... there&#x27;s not enough money to rebuild Detroit&#x27;s water, where should the money for a full scale grid rebuild come from? It&#x27;s all decades old infrastructure, no matter if in the US or Germany. Replacing or significantly upgrading it means <i>billions</i> to <i>trillions</i> of dollars.