Once you reach a critical mass of users, taking over the world will be inevitable, even with some of the inconveniences. Finding a gas station, for example, will get harder for ICE drivers as EV vehicles take off (lots of gas stations will go out of business, so you'll have to drive longer to refill your car), auto shops capable of dealing with ICE will become more scarce and expensive, etc...

At some point, the annoyance of owning an EV for some of the extreme edge cases will be less intense than the annoyance of owning an ICE vehicle. Even without proper infrastructure, the switch to an EV will be the only sensible move, even if it requires changing your habits.

It feels like you are making them mutually exclusive, it's far more likely there will be significant overlap... Do you remember the LCD TV transition? There was a period where you could basically get TVs with huge screens for free. That period mostly passed and now LCD TVs are also more reasonably priced anyway. Something similar will no doubt happen with the EV transition, unless an outside force ban them (i.e heavy handed government regulation, like Japan's 5 year car rule or something).

For the gas stations, that infrastructure will also transition, and those huge fuel tanks sunk into the ground aren't going anywhere, i'm sure they will continue to sell petrol along side EV charging stations.

Also all those millions of mechanics with decades of experience aren't about to suddenly forget all their ICE specific knowledge. Additionally parts from breakers yards will will probably be near free.

You think I’m letting that pass without pointing out that the fuel tanks are a sunk cost? Gas stations are really convenience stores, they don’t make money on fuel. The only difference will be that we pull up in an EV to get our Big Gulp. Gas or no, that real estate will still be used to sell you chips and lottery tickets.

In the Seattle area, I know of at least three shops that specialize in VW vans, a vehicle last sold in the U. S. over 25 years ago. Three, for a vehicle that wasn’t that popular in the U. S. when you could buy them new. Yeah, yeah, hippy-wannabes and nostalgia, but the fact remains that more than one shop stays in business working on ICE vehicles that are old enough to have been doing keg stands for four years.

That is true, yet it makes no difference to my point.

All but the most poorly run will pay whatever is needed to install electric chargers and stay in the game.

For instance at the moment in the UK many supermarkets are putting mini stores in petrol stations.

However with electric charging taking longer, I can imagine that McDonalds might start buying up petrol stations.

I'm not sure "taking over the world" is necessarily equivalent with universal adoption. Getting to a substantial majority of new car sales (currently only around 1% in the US) would qualify in my mind.

> Tricks like going to that one Whole Foods store that has the fast chargers won't work when a significant % of cars are EVs, there simply will need to be a lot more public chargers

Increased EV adoption will incentivize more investment in EV chargers. The chargers at businesses like Whole Foods are being installed with private capital because they think it makes business sense. More EVs means more demand for public chargers which will in turn justify increased investment in those chargers.

Sure, same as it used to be awkward to have to hunt around for a power point in a coffee shop/mall/etc or to figure out where had wifi. Now that's pretty standard fare.

Just like EV charging is today - in most countries there's quite a lot of places you can go to charge at. Soon it'll be every mall and shopping centre, because (at first) it'll be a way to attract customers, and then eventually it'll be expected.

This is still a problem if you can charge in 5 minutes.

Throw in a few fast ones for the people who need them and you are sorted. The fast chargers can be multi-head too, so even if someone finishes charging and doesn't come back someone else can still use it. Most rapid chargers are like that.

Also, if it's still a problem with a five minute charge, why doesn't it affect petrol pumps?

Or you glue on half a parking meter to turn the electricity on and off.

Do you have any numbers, or are you guessing?

An average Nissan Leaf battery is about 24kwh (although some cars have much smaller or larger batteries). So if you assume an average Leaf is totally empty, and charging to completely full, that would be a little less than $3 of electricity for roughly 84 miles of range.

To charge a car quickly takes a lot of electricity. But to trickle charge a car takes very little electricity. You can charge cars on as little as 120 volts at 8 amps -- that's less electricity than the average plug-in space heater.

A small parking lot could easily handle 20+ cars simultaneously charging overnight, with just a single standard US household circuit. (100 - 150 amps).

But why didn't you consider other costs, such as equipment installation and maintenance?

And what about the grid? Can the grid sustain the equivalent amount of energy that the nation's cars burn every day in gasoline?

When car parks need to charge hundreds of cars at a time, it will be proditable for them to they will build power providing structures.

Plus, many gas stations are like mini shopping centers now.

Edit: Also this discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/5los32/can_a_t...