1. They have done no work on making electric vechiles viable for long term use or travel. Meaning that road trips in your electric car is near impossible because there aren't enough (if any) road stops, hotels, charging stations, available to make sure you can plug your Tesla or whatever in over night, or just while you shop to make sure you don't run out of juice.
If they don't make petrol prices high, why does anyone have a motivation to install the infrastructure for electric?
This is how capitalism works: people choose the cheap option. By which I mean short term cheap, given the long-term costs of potentially wrecking the planet they're on.
People need to be incentivised to turn to electric. Either the government can slap some sort of ban down (no petrol cars sold after 2030, etc.) which has no hope of passing in the USA; or it can massively subsidise electric, which won't happen because it is a government spending measure that has no hope of passing; or they can make petrol expensive, and let businesspeople do the rest to meet the coming demand, which they'll fucking love and make plenty of them lots of money.
Let's also be clear: petrol is going to become unviable for road vehicles eventually. The sooner the USA adapts and prepares for this, the better it's going to be.
Yeah absolutely cost is a big problem. Which is also one of the reasons why i said that our technology simply isnt there yet. As tech improves costs go down.
Right now the cheapest Tesla is a little over 40k which isnt hugely expensive but is still out of the price range for a lot of people. Even my fully loaded 2019 Nissan with all the fancy shit they could pack into the thing was only 30k.
Im sure as making fully electric cars advances those prices will go down a bit. But not only does cost have to go down but battery life has to get better. As much as tech has improved in the last 20 years, we have made very little improvement on batteries.
200 mile ranges are nothing, i drive 520miles a week just going to and from work. Electric cars are a luxurious novelty right now, not practical replacements for everyday life.
520 miles a week, assuming 5 days work, is ~100 miles a day. So go to work, come home and plug in, back to full charge the next day, rinse and repeat. The range is more a problem for very long distances. However, there is already fast charging capability and some cars get about 80% in ~15-20 minutes. Drive for 2-3 hours, you should be having a break to rest about that time.
Secondly, the cost of a car is not just the initial outlay - it's also the maintenance and fuel costs. Electric cars will have lower fuel and (because of that complex combustion engine) lower maintenance. The
lifetime cost of an electric car is not much different from petrol/diesel. You can buy a car on a finance deal with monthly payments and spread it out.
I also wonder whether car ownership is going to dive anyway. Companies like Uber and automated driving are pointing us at a world where you don't need to own a car. You just order one on an app when you need it and it takes you somewhere. People who need to do lots of driving may still prefer their own, but chances are many are likely to find rental or automated "taxi" cheaper and easier.