I noticed the vehicle was not a Tesla. I've read a lot about the pros and cons of electric vehicles. It seems like Tesla is about 2 generations ahead of everyone else. They have longer range and faster charging than other vehicles, and they are lowering prices.
Popular Mechanics did a test of a BMW gasoline vehicle, a Tesla (don't remember which model, but it was a long range version), and an electric Mustang. They all drove the same route from somewhere on the east coast to Chicago, article said 1,000 miles. The BMW gasoline made in in 19 hours, Tesla in 21 hours, the Mustang in 36 hours. Now they had to stop overnight for the same length of time. Tesla used their supercharging stations (1,000 volts DC charging, takes about 45 minutes). The Mustang used government subsidized 220 volt AC charging stations. They said a couple of extra hours or about 1 hour per day longer was within reason.
After this test, Tesla got contracts with Ford, GM, Chrysler, and several other foreign vehicles for charging rights to their charging stations. So Tesla is going to make money from competitors using their charging stations. Tesla is considering opening Tesla restaurants with charging stations at every parking space. This would allow them to make money off the restaurant as well as people stopping for lunch on a trip to charge while they eat. Smart move.
I am not advocating electric cars, one way of the other. However Toyota tested a solid state battery on one of their cars and got over 900 mile range. This solid state battery can charge in 5-10 minutes and uses far cheaper materials to manufacture. HOWEVER, it is a complicated manufacturing process and they said they can't make but 10,000 vehicles using solid state batteries due to the time and process it takes.
Solid state batteries use somewhat similar technology to zip drives that store information electronically. Instead they store power, quick to charge, and can be slow release. Still a long way to go.
The drawbacks to electric cars is they use, in one year, the same amount of power as two homes in a year. 200 million vehicles running electric would be like atting 400 million homes to the grid. The grid cannot absolutely cannot handle it. It is going to take years to upgrade the grid. This has to be done FIRST, while they get all the bugs out of electric vehicles, like range, quick charging, and cost.
Texas alone has enough windmills to power their state, but only 22% of the power gets to the people. They are having easement and right of way problems getting the power from west Texas to east Texas where most of the people live. Nukes have to be in the mix. The company that was supposed to build windmills off the New Jersey coast went bankrupt. Storing wind and solar power in giant batteries or some way has to be factored in, but that is where the cost skyrockets. Windmills alone cost about as much as natural gas to produce power, however, sometimes the wind doesn't blow, and sometimes it blows too much. This is were storage has to be built to flatten out the release. Solar is getting fairly cheap. I recently priced it for my home. It would cost about $2,000-$4,000, but no power at night. Adding the batteries necessary to store this power would be around $12-15,000. So, that gets it up to $16-20,000. Not cost effective.
So, regardless of what the left says, it is going to take about 30 years to work out the pricing and build the infrastructure for solar/wind/nuclear clean power. Nuclear is a little more expensive, but less than battery storage. Nukes are 24-7 power for years. Some power plants are over 50 years old. If built properly are safe and clean. France produces about 85% of it's power from nukes. They built them all alike and modular so parts are easy to replace.
