I think EVs are a great idea for a lot of applications. I think BEVs are one of the dumbest ideas we have ever come up with as a species, right up there with Kardashians.
There are certain applitahere a BEV makes sense. School buses and regular buses, are both great examples. Regular buses are almost 100% city use, with plenty of regeneration chances, and they stop at defined bus stops that could be configured as charging points if needed. Plus they're large vehicles with lots of roof.space for solar panels that could so charge them. School buses sit for half a day between pick up and drop off and could be charged then and overnight. And I will concede there are people who have just the right commute for an ROI on a BEV.
That said, I would wager the vast majority of people don't fall into that situation, unless they live somewhere like CA or NYC or some.place with politicians that are vested into it for whatever reason (trying to stay apolitical here). In places that don't have high gas taxes, most folks will never see an ROI.
That said, PHEVs and series hybrid or ER EVs make a lot of sense for almost everyome, provided they keep the cost down. And that should be easy to do by making smaller, cheaper batteries, and using powertrains that are inexpensive yet provide the power generation necessary to run as a generator. For performance guys like me, a PHEV can be awesome because I can outt around on battery for the ~30 miles I might commute (mine is 20 a day), and get extra thrust when I want to go fast.
I think synthetic fuels are the answer.to the much spoken about global warming issue a d fossil fuels usage issue. Ignoring the question of validity of that concern or solutions proposed, the biggest obstacle (that isn't financial interests of people who shouldn't be allowed to have financial interests) is energy creation. Synthetic fuels are at a basic level bottling up energy, taking energy loss along the way. Conveniently, that's the same problem that has to be solved with charging a bunch of batteries. And if you solve that hurdle with a form of energy that's clean and makes abundant amounts of energy (this wonder energy would probably be called something like "nukular" if it existed), you could turn on large scale synthetic fuel creation easily and reuse existing vehicles and infrastructure and not have any technical limitations.
Even if we decided to say that electric motors are the better form of propelling a vehicle, a ra.ge extender running on synthetic fuel is still a better option than lugging around a big heavy expensive battery as opposed to a standard fuel tank and a generator motor designed with low cost and reliability in mind. You wouldn't need any of the extra emissions stuff we have on our ICE engines now because the synthetic fuels don't create pollution, and since it just has to spin a generator it doesn't need a ton of power.
All that said, all the BE s on the BEVs on the market are unappealing to me. They're either super cheap inside and poorly built (Tesla, Mach E), too weird (Rivian, Hyundai, Kia), too doomed (Rivian, Fisker), close but need to be closer to a gasser (Lightning), or just plain too expensive (all the German offerings). BMW I think is getting closest with stuff like the I5, and the Audi ETron GT and Taycan are just too much money. Lightning I could have seen myself.owning actually, had they just made it a powertrain in regular f150 like BMW is doing. But being stuck with a truck that looks 2 generations old now with that hideous vertical screen I just can't do
Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED talk
