nestork wrote:

My understanding is that a lingering problem with electric cars is that
they use lithium ion battery packs, and those battery packs are really
nothing more than 300 or so laptop li-ion batteries. So, you pay
$40,000 to buy the car new, but the li-ion batteries don't last any
longer than they would in a laptop computer. So, a few years down the
road you're looking at buying a new battery pack for the car, or 300
battery packs at $50 per battery pack, or $15,000.

It's that problem with the battery packs for the cars only lasting a few
years that still needs to be solved. I, for one, wouldn't want to drive
an electric car if I had to pay two or three times as much more for
batteries than I would have to pay for gasoline in a conventional car.

Does anyone know if this is correct or am I misinformed?

--
nestork

The packs last more like 5+ years, but it's still an issue.

A greater issue is the time to charge vs. the time to fuel a liquid
fueled vehicle. Fueling a liquid fueled vehicle for ~500 miles range
takes about 10 min maximum, vs. 8 hours for 15 miles in an EV. There is
no way EVs will go beyond niche and ego driven users without resolving
that issue.

Fortunately that issue was solved long ago in electric warehouse
forklifts where rather than have the forklift down for 6+ hours to
recharge, they just swap battery packs with a freshly charged one and
the forklift is off and running on the next shift while the previous
battery pack recharges.

This is ultimately where EVs need to go and it will require standardized
battery packs and robotic automation to change them at the "gas
station". This way when your EV is low on charge you can pull into the
station, park at the "pump" and a robotic system changes out your
battery packs from underneath the vehicle and you're on your way with a
full charge in a comparable time to a conventional gas station.

Beyond the standardization of battery packs and under vehicle access to
them, this also requires you to own a battery pack in a common pool,
something similar to the cylinder exchanges that are common for propane
and industrial gasses. This also amortizes the cost of pack replacement
and refurbishing into the pool the same as hydro testing and occasional
cylinder replacement are absorbed into the pool for gas cylinders.

Those "fixes" will make EVs useable to a substantially larger percentage
of the population. Combine that with some new nuke plants, tidal
generation and other green electricity sources to provide "free"
charging power at residences so you can top up overnight for the next
days travel and we it can have a huge impact on overall emissions and
oil use. As the batteries improve and longer ranges on a charge are
available still more people will be able to utilize EVs.

Those changes are the only way an EV would be useful to me, much of my
driving is short local trips where it makes little difference if I drove
an EV or my diesel F350, it's still a negligible expense per trip. My
longer trips are ~120 miles RT so without a quick pack replacement "gas
station" and EV would be useless to me.