.. sounds like any cure may be worse than the disease
Honestly, the future isn't EVs, it's
getting as many people working from home as possible.
The large bulk of people use their cars to get to and from work, and with so much office work being done on computers these days, and with the internet getting better (at least in other countries, smh) it'll mean that more and more businesses will shift to a working from home model. There's only so much wage-cutting you can do as a business before you shoot yourself in the foot, so the only way to cut down costs is to stop renting a massive office building. I mean, if you know anything you know how bloody expensive it is to rent an office building.
A lot of American tech companies are pissing off out of California for that reason. High state taxes, high cost of living, a huge homeless problem brought on by the pandemic, coupled with high rental costs is causing a mass exodus from that city to states like Arizona and Nevada. Why rent an expensive, massive office when the bulk of your workforce can live somewhere nice and work remotely? It also makes your company look really good seeing as you don't have 5,000 workers stuck in traffic, burning fuel on the highways every day.
I tried WFH and honestly I got a lot more done because I didn't have to burn a good hour of my day getting ready. I could just rock up to my desk in my PJs and get all my work done in half a day. Also meant that in my idle time (while I was waiting for other people to get back to me) I could get stuff done around the house.
For others however the limiting factor isn't cars, it's trucks, chargers and charging tech. Wendover Productions (look him up, he's pretty awesome) did an awesome video on this. Current-day EV cars can do the range already that most customers want, it's just the lack of chargers available, as well as a non-standard plug in America. Like, we could go to any servo, and know that the nozzle is going to fit our fuel filler as it's a standard across the auto industry, but in the US at least there's like three different charge plugs. I know we've solved that in Australia where all EVs have to have CCS plugs installed, but Australia suffers even more from the lack of charging infrastructure due to the lack of uptake.
To be honest though, once they crack getting say, 1000km range in a dual cab ute, for less than $50k, and then back it up with a fully comprehensive charging network and decent charging tech, You bet your bottom dollar every man and his 2.2 kids would eat that **** up. Why? Because tradies. You cannot deny that tradies
will always exist to some degree as houses will always need to be built and homes always need to be maintained, so you need to make your vehicles fit their needs. The dual-cab ute fits the bill just nicely for the bulk of people, why do you think it's so popular?
To re-iterate, the future for the bulk of people isn't EVs, it's eliminating the concept of the commute altogether for as many people as possible. For those who can't eliminate the commute? Get
those people into EVs. The rest can take the damn train.
