The Electric Car Paradox: Can We Switch To Electric Cars? Sadly, no...
The simple answer is no - and the complicated answer is also no.Consumers in almost any motorized car loving country, now including China and India whose car industries have until recently shown straight-line upward growth (with China already vastly outdistancing the USA by car output) have a common complaint at the fuel filling station. They whine and complain about oil prices because they buy gasoline and diesel fuel almost daily, at least regularly, and are keenly aware of price changes. These are usually upward.
The "problem of Peak Oil" has been dusted off in 2011, and has started becoming an almost respectable theme for the elected, and self-elected political and corporate guardians of consumer society and civilization (if we can call it a civilization). Their answer is now: Electric cars and vehicles, collectively called EVs.
It sounds neat on paper, and leading editorialists - myopic visionaries with rose coloured glasses - quite regularly beat the drum for "switching" from oil-fuelled mass car fleets, to electrically propelled mass car fleets. In their most delirious flights of fancy, The Switch is presented as being possible and able to operated "almost overnight". Leading politicians who defend the all-electric road transport future, such as France's Sarkozy and Germany's Merkel, gaily talk about millions, even a low number of tens of millions of EVs on the roads of their countries by about 2021. Ten years is an awful long way in the future for politicians who, with luck, might cling on to power another 6 months! more
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