Yep, agreed that it will take a while for all the petrol cars to come off the road, but the reports prediction is specifically talking about new car sales, and only the majority (which I read as > 50 %) by 2038.

I just feel that the prediction is almost laughably conservative.

My prediction: When the price hits parity (my gut says in less than 5 years), the convenience of electric will see mass adoption over a period of a few years. It will be the transition from film to digital cameras all over again and the change will be rapid. More than 50% of new car sales will be EV sometime before 2030.

Cars cost much more than cameras (one or two zeroes more) so old cars are going to stay around for a longer time. The other problem is building the energy distribution network. The street road I'm looking at now is filled with parked cars and no recharge points. There is a gas station. Any of those cars can spend five minutes there and go on for hundreds of km. None of them could be recharged if they were electric. There is a car sharing service with electric cars in this city. They have their own recharge points. They drive their cars there at night. They use portable car batteries to move cars with completely empty batteries. My guess is that's going to take much more than five years to get to the point where people can be confident of being able to recharge their batteries anytime they need it. Some EU countries set the late 2030s as a target to stop selling gas and that's also my guess.

> Cars cost much more than cameras (one or two zeroes more) so old cars are going to stay around for a longer time.

I feel that in both my comments I have been quite clear that I have been talking about new car sales only.

At the risk of repeating myself, I agree that it will take a while for all petrol cars to come off the road, even when the majority of new car sales are EV.

> It will be the transition from film to digital cameras all over again and the change will be rapid.

What a fantastic comparison. Early electric cars like the Leaf feel like the really early 0.3 MP digital cameras or 32 MB MP3 players or Windows Mobile 3.1 telephones.

Once you can buy a Model 3 type car for the price of a VW Polo then Ford will be the new Kodak.

Maybe... But, because this industry wide shift is playing out on a much longer time scale, it looks like most of the existing big auto companies are aware of, and going to make the shift. Case in point, the Nissan plan I mentioned above.

Getting cars off of the road will need some (local) government involvement. For example here in Rotterdam getting a parking permit is already subject to emission levels. Car too old? No permit for you! There also used to be an incentive where you would get a “wrecking bonus” if you let your old, more polluting, car be dismantled and buy a new more efficient one. I think that plus investment in (public/private) charging infrastructure in cities would have people switch a lot quicker.

However, concerning cities, I’d like to see a lot of emphasis on _not_ driving a car at all in the city

I'm of the opinion that once a certain number of cars are EVs, a lot of pertrol stations will find themselves unprofitable. These will then close. People will see this happening and desire EVs even more. This will cause uptake of EVs to accelerate, causing more pressure on petrol stations, creating a vicious cycle that will make it harder and harder to keep using a ICE vehicle.

I also predict that there will be a healthy aftermarket converting ICE vehicles into EVs (or maybe even official manufacturer solutions).

I agree. While EVs are nice, and the reduced noise is a real blessing in the city, and even better blessing would be not needing cars at all.

Not only noise but also the reduction in emission is huge. Consider the recent court case in London where the question is whether air pollution killed a girl as well as a recent research indicating that air pollution, especially in cities, is impacting health much more then previously thought

I’m really not sure what’s supposed to be so much more convenient about electric cars.

At present about once a week I stop and get gas. It’s no big deal if I ever forget because filling up is a five minute process. Twice a year I get an oil change.

If I get an EV I have to remember to plug it in every night. If I forget, it is a much longer process to recharge.

What exactly is the incredible added benefit I as a consumer am getting from an EV? People tout reliability, but Tesla isn’t selling me on that and the powertrain is not a high failure item in the first place - you can easily expect 250-300k miles with minimal maintenance. The stuff that goes wrong in cars is invariably the other crap - electronics, sensors, computers, anti-theft systems, climate control, power windows. Getting an EV doesn’t save me from that.

Far more charging stations will be needed. In the US, we see a few chargers in one place, maybe. Here's a taxi charging station in Shenzhen.[1] That's what scale looks like.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-16/the-world...