There will be significant additional load on the Electric grid. This will require the electric grid to be overhauled around the country. Couple this with "smart grid" mandates & you have yet another channel for government control via bureaucracy & regulation. Denizens of cities tend to be more numb to government control & people in more sparsely populated areas tend to be more willing to demand/defend freedom & liberty.

There are many new properties that need to add utility poles. Don't forget power loss over distance.

The big advantage of Gas is you can transport/store the product without the product losing energy.

> We could easily eliminate 50+% of US personal vehicle emissions, simply by putting 2013-era PHEV technology into every single car /SUV / truck, and getting people to plug them into regular 120V US household outlets overnight. Even rural folks would benefit greatly from getting 1 or 2 free "electricity gallons" every night.

Living in Tennessee, it's difficult to ignore the power lines everywhere in otherwise abundant greenery. Electric cars will only add more power lines & infrastructure.

Two electric cars in a household, both charging simultaneously, uses less electricity combined than just one standard clothes dryer or one central air conditioner -- the kind of appliances everyone already has in their home and runs regularly.

It's not nothing of course. And some parts of the grid will need capacity improvements. But we're only talking about 900 to 1400 watts per car here, and most of that only happening at night when there's lots of spare capacity already. I don't see any factual reasons this would crush the power grid -- cars simply don't use enough electricity to cause a major problem.

For full electric with higher mileage 5,000-10,000 watts would be a lot more likely (Tesla sells a 17 KW charger).

I don't think so. Sure, it's technically possible to use that much power, but most people aren't going to empty their Tesla battery every single day, for the same reason most people don't buy a whole tank of gasoline every single day.

You can charge a Tesla on a 1.4kw US household outlet, just like every other car. It will still give you 50+ miles a night. Bump that to just a 3.3kW charger and you'll be pulling over 100 miles of charge nightly. 3.3kW is more than enough to cover 92% of all commuters nationwide, according to USDOT.

Superchargers are awesome and all, and are great for roadtrips, but 99% of people will have no need to pull 17kW down in their home. That's an insane amount of power.

Those utility poles and power lines you worry about are there to handle peak load, which won't be impacted at all by EVs, which will charge predominantly at night.

A solid mix of renewables -- hydro or geo for base load, with solar for peak load and wind to top off intermittent and nighttime demand -- is most efficient when the demand is relatively stable. No more need to shunt perfectly good electricity into the ground just because it's night.

And boy oh boy does it make the grid economics of distributed solar better. If most of your home's solar production capacity is being soaked up by your car, the grid and utility doesn't need to support big buy/sell cycles on sunny days. Electric cars would stabilize pricing and are probably the only way SmartGrid can realistically work.

Unlike refrigerator compressors or clothes dryers, electric cars have a smooth rate of draw and, as small industries pop up to parasitize the big battery in your EV, we'll increasingly see EVs as a home's store of electricity. This will be good for the system in the same way that per-home cisterns dramatically reduce demand on the water systems here in Southern Europe.

You can even go so far as to have the cars soak up the capacity. If you have a 2kW capacity circuit in the house, you can have the car drop it's draw as the fridge compressor clicks in.

>The big advantage of Gas is you can transport the product without the product losing energy.

the cost of transportation and infrastructure like for example gas loading terminals and gas stations is higher for gas than electricity. That is the "loss of energy".

Source (2013): http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~pu4i-aok/cooldata2/hybridcar/hyb... (it also claims a 42% efficiency for diesels on highways)

True, but people will be charging their cars most often when they're asleep, so it's less of an impact on peak load. It may be more of a base load/duty cycle impact.

However, even then, this type of load is also easily interruptible and automatically controlled by modern hardware. This makes it more serviceable with renewable power, more easy to make price-sensitive, and more able to provide demand response. (Potentially to the extent of being able to put power back into the grid and act as a negative load.)

(That said, the original idea of a household outlet is a stretch... I understand charging a Tesla at 120V/15A to be glacially slow.)

So gas tankers and carriers run on unicorn farts now? ;)

> Living in Tennessee, it's difficult to ignore the power lines everywhere in otherwise abundant greenery. Electric cars will only add more power lines & infrastructure.

Continue at the current rate of emissions and pollution, and the only greenery left in Tennessee or anywhere else will be brownish algae.

The irony here is that people living in cities, who would most benefit from the advantages of EVs, are also more likely to live in Condos or Apartments, many of which do not have outlets in their garage.

I had to rule out an EV purchase for just that reason.

Suburban and rural dwellers will still need their own car, but even then it makes more sense to have a PHEV than an ICE. And pure EVs with range extenders (parallel diesel/gas generators) make yet more sense, if the aesthetics and modularity problems can be solved. Yes, these solutions are more costly, but them's the brakes. Nobody has a right to live -- cheaply -- far from shared infrastructure.

Even for small-time landlords, their tenants will ask "where do I charge my EV" before they sign the lease.

As a long distance backpacker I'd love to be able to get a ride to and from the trail at a reasonable price.

Of course, we'd also need better cell coverage.

I've been deterred from hiking the Grand Canyon rim to rim by needing to either hike all the way back, or have two cars and add a 5-hour drive. Salt Creek in Canyonlands is another where a shuttle is a help, or crossing from The Maze over the river to The Needles (avoiding many hours of driving back).

Being able to call a self-driving car to affordably make these trips would be great.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation

US West is more like Siberia, or Canada 100 miles north from the border. There are not enough subscribers to economically cover with GSM / LTE, except in cities and along major roads.

If anything, rural and exurban folks will have the most to benefit from electric vehicles and PHEVs (even without any charging infrastructure), since they end up driving more miles on average than city residents.

Self-driving cars can co-exist with short-term rentals. I live in Seattle and recently sold my car because ReachNow is good enough: it does short-term rentals by the mile, but when I go hiking I can do half/full-day rentals, and it still ends up being a lot cheaper than owning a car. And this is before self-driving and the cost savings of EV enter the equation.

I disagree with this. Why not? Hell, reserve the car for two weeks and have it sit there at the trail parking lot, if you want the old school experience. Still cheaper (for you, for the environment) than full time owning a car which is unused 90% of the time.

For some this will mean their optimum is less car ownership, and for others no car ownership.

The trend will be amplified in areas with limited parking and high costs of living.

Also, you can always rent a car to go to the trailhead, just like you do on vacation.

None of this is dependent on electric or even self driving cars, as it is all already happening today with ride services and ICE cars, but self driving cars shift the economics considerably away from private car ownership.