Ignoring the near future has never been wise.
I am...and a EE specifically & one who's been watching PV development since 82. I see nothing wrong with his math....and it is math not emotion. Just becuase Musk has ADD & an unchecked ego doesn't make him wrong. As for the Li-ion fire challenge - who says it needs to be Li-ion to provide reliable grid power? No one who's studied it. Case in point practically in my back yard this MIT spinoff shows enormous promise: https://ambri.com/
except 'scientific pronouncements' like flying cars in 20 years have proven to be fantastically wrong despite being re-issued year after year after year by very serious engineers with multiple letter after their names. Ditto battery efficiency. I'll grant you EV will increase for a bit. But then we'll wizen the hell up and use something else.
before we hit 50% EV. All these fleets buying EV to be cool and eco-preen about zero carbon will in 10 years have papers written in business schools about how stupid they were, and how it didn't do a damn thing about CO2 and caused enormous property damage and loss.
#metoo
Now, sure. Mid decade EVs are predicted to approach price parity without rebates. By the end of the decade they will be cheaper. Battery prices continue to fall and otherwise they are much simpler plaforms. TBH it’s mostly a question of when they will be cheaper, not if.
if you don't want to eat. Nebraska gets a hell of a lot of snow. Peak panel efficiency is only about 6 hrs/day and that applies to summer. Even if the panel is clean the output during winter is considerably less during those same peak hours.
Flying cars was never more than Popular Science pronouncements much like jet packs, escalator sidewalks, and moon base vacations. That is nothing at all like the international auto industry converting from ICE power plants en masse & autonomous driving in a close second. That is a fact. You may not like it or believe in it but then again neither did those vested in the notion that horses were irreplaceable. This is coming fast and its not a short term solution. We'll have our GT350's etc but it will be along side massive changes for non enthusiast's choices...many of which will be driverless. Hard to accept but real. Again wrt to the grid why ignore the non Li-ion storage being pursued? Just to argue about some massive fire potential for Li-ions that are only grouped in limited qtys? Dams can burst, transported & stored refinery products can leak, coal slag runoff toxifies ground water, and fission nuke waste is an endless burden....we DO come up with better ideas and need to.
Imagine you're comparing all that "rare earth elements" hunting & mining for oil...just a reminder that's the as deep single use dirty alternative. Our ICE engines are a product of mined material too some rare some not - most recyclable just like a EV except not the 4x inefficiency burned up.
50% every day? I calculate that maximum is 2/3 of a gallon of gas to power each of your 275M vehicles each day. If only we got away with 18 days of driving per tank. And wrt EV's a modern roof top PV array can easily provide that directly with little transmission loss and leftovers for heat pumps/ac.
Yep, change is coming.
And for what its worth that's what Musk argued with his "roughly" 10,000 square miles.
I hear ya...I'm burning through $75 every 4 days and thats not even counting the Voodoo coming out to play ; )