Electric vehicles could fully recharge in 5 minutes with new cable design
Many have mentioned why this isn&#x27;t going to work from the perspective of practical charging of batteries.  What must also be understood is that our electrical grid simply cannot handle massive numbers of electric vehicles hyper-charging, to coin a term.<p>I have said this many times:  The problem is power.  Many think about electrics in terms of energy.  However, power is the problem.  If a million cars need to charge in 5 minutes you will set transmission lines on fire and explode transformers (not really, just being dramatic).  This is because the energy has to be delivered very quickly, which means we need the capacity to deliver power we simply do not currently have.<p>A full transition to electrics will likely require more than double the production capacity we have today.  The models I&#x27;ve used to understand this say we need between 900 and 1400 GW over the current capacity of 1200 GW.  And you can&#x27;t do it with solar.<p>I don&#x27;t know how to put it yet.  There&#x27;s an inequality developing with regards to electric vehicles.  As their numbers increase they will use more and more of a resource that is truly scarce.  We don&#x27;t have enough power generation capacity.  I haven&#x27;t done the math on the threshold yet, but it is there.  And so, everyone driving electric cars today and in the next, say, 5 to 10 years, is and will be abusing of a limited resource.<p>This, in a sense, isn&#x27;t any different from using too much water.  We have a limited supply.  Some of us have removed most of our lawns and replaced them with either zero water alternatives or very low water plants and shrubs.  Others have huge, lush, green lawns both in front and in the back of their homes that consume ridiculous amounts of water.  It looks great, but they are doing it at the expense of others who respect the shared resource.<p>This aspect of electrics is going to become a political mess.  It isn&#x27;t there yet, but it will be at some point.  My guess is that&#x27;s the moment when politicians will come out of the woodwork and tax the shit out of electrics.  It will be interesting to see what happens then.<p>Nothing is simple.