No, these seem like pretty solid questions to ask if you are going to be forced to buy an electric car, not just if society is going to go all electric. Unless we're trying to convince people to just stop buying cars altogether in 2030.
That was my point. You aren't going to be forced to buy an EV. The used market for ICE vehicles can be expected to be robust for some 15-20 years after the ban on new cars goes into effect.
Newer cars will have improvements in other things besides motive power, like safety features. Are we going to force people who are not in a situation where EVs are usable, to forgo safety measures as well?
I'm also sure at some point someone somewhere might be inconvenienced by decisions like this, but we are going to have to just accept that if we want to combat climate change. Maybe you object to it for a political or ideological reason. However it doesn't make sense to blame that objection on the lack of currently existing infrastructure when it would be 20-30 years before we truly need that level of infrastructure.
I don't agree. Where I currently live, there are often waitlists for rationed time at workplace charging spots. The person who you initially responded to also has massive issues charging anywhere outside the home. We are already at a point where electric infrastructure is woefully inadequate to deal with the influx of EVs in the current market, which isn't all that EV friendly; this will be catastrophic once all new cars are required to be EV-friendly.
The correct choice to combat climate change would be to actually make credible, large investments in national EV charging networks, not pooh pooh the issue and tell motorists to eat cake.
>Obviously the UK would need to improve in the meantime, but they would basically have 30 years to get their EV infrastructure into the position it works for every car owner.
I acknowledge it needs to improve. However conversion of infrastructure doesn't need to be completed by 2030. A gradual increase in infrastructure over the next 20-30 years can get the job done and is eminently doable.
This isn't what's "works for every car owner", this is "works for even a majority of car owners". The current setup is terrible, the current investment pace is terrible, and there are currently no actionable plans to do better. And here we are talking like a ban is supposed to be feasible and this is going to get bearable in a nine-year timeframe.
We're not talking about the conversion of infrastructure, we're talking about the existence of adequate infrastructure. Other countries with electric transitions have clearly put public funding for infrastructure in place, and that's why it's not punishing for them to mandate it, because they are already ready.
2020 - EV infrastructure works for a minority of drivers.
2030 - EV infrastructure works for the average driver.
2045 - EV infrastructure works for all drivers.
Also I was talking about conversion because it isn't like the ICE infrastructure is going to persist in perpetuity. That real estate can be converted over to public EV chargers as the ratio of cars on the road change. Right now Tesla's fastest chargers can do an 80% charge in less than 30 minutes. If the industry is able to cut that in half over the next 20 years, recharging an EV isn't really going to be any less practical than refueling an ICE vehicle. We aren't going to need a dedicated parking space with a dedicated charger for every car by 2030.
But I think you're right about the bigger issue — Norway's further along the road, and has been able to fix the infrastructure enough that people don't complain much, and has done so in much less than those 30 years. There are complaints, e.g. about building coops that won't let people install chargers in shared garages.
Here is my source[1]. Average age for vehicles in operation is 11.9 years. 1 in 4 cars are at least 16 years old. Do you have a source on your claims?
[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/25percent-of-cars-in-us-are-...
"according to the research, the average age of all cars on UK roads has increased from 6.7 years in 1994 to 8.3 years in 2019."
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-8739771/Bri...
So the average car is getting older, but still far from 12 years.
I seem to find useful pages only in German now (I am in Germany), which I expect wouldn't help you much, but statista.com and wikipedia.org has both, and if you wade through all the irrelevant graphs on statista you'll typically see that total/new is in the low teens for western countries (I checked three now, e.g. 47m/3.4m for .de, almost 14y lifetime or 7y average age).
They have much longer than 9 years to get the infrastructure right.
The average car age in the US is roughly 12 years old. I imagine is is roughly the same in the UK. That means even if they stop selling new ICE cars in 2030 the average car might still be an ICE into the 2040s. Assuming no further restrictions it probably wouldn't be until the 2050s that it would become truly difficult to find a used ICE car.
Obviously the UK would need to improve in the meantime, but they would basically have 30 years to get their EV infrastructure into the position it works for every car owner.