E-Car Chatter

I follow the E-car trend in Germany a good bit.  Because of the mandate approaching in a decade....where gas/diesel cars can no longer be sold (as new), the question of E-cars is significant.

Today, Focus put up an article over Alexander Noodt....the ARD (public TV) reporter.  He went and spent a week driving around Germany in an E-car....to judge the experience.  A total of 3,000 km was spent on this 'test'.

He does give it a thumbs-up on the 'fun' factor.

But then he comes to the repeating problem...at 200 to 250 km, he had to go and calculate where the nearest charging station was, and this wasn't necessarily an easy task.

He points out at one point, he ended up at a 'slower' station, where the charge-up was at a lesser speed....meaning the charge time was going to be seven hours.

The need for more fast-charging stations?  It's apparent, but it's not going to happen overnight.

At some point in the experience, he kinda figures out that some metropolitan cities are extremely proactive in terms of charging stations....others are much less proactive.

Then he came to this mathematical problem which I saw two years when I was reviewing the idea of the next family car being electric.  You can charge off your home charging station and feel good about the cost factor (especially if you had solar panels up).  But the minute that you depend on commercial charging on a long trip....the price is a big factor (just in general, electrical costs in Germany are hyped-up and more than most neighboring countries). 

He avoids saying it.....but as long as gas is 'cheaper' (some Germans would laugh at the mere suggestion), there's not going to be that most interest in going toward an E-car. 

The public chatter that a million E-cars ought to be on the road by now?  At some point around three years ago, the Chancellor did a speech and advocated that it was going to be a trendy thing by this point.  Presently, it's in the 250k to 300k range, with the million E-car point probably another three years away. 

I view this 'hope' that the political and environmental folks have on the E-car being a big success in Germany, as being dependent on three key factors:

1.  Some miracle battery has to arrive with 700 to 800 km being the 'norm', and a recharge taking a mere hour to accomplish. 

2.  Electrical costs need to be cheaper in some way than gas.  Some can imagine some major tax occurring with gas, to push people along this trail.

3.  A normal family-sized E-car has to be in some affordable range of 25k Euro....something which seems fairly impossible at the present rate.

I spent probably forty man-hours examining this whole discussion in 2018/2019....even attending a solar-power show in Munich, and doing a Audi test-drive of their electric vehicle.  For every positive I felt along the way.....there was an equal sized negative.  I think ARD's reporter came to the same basic problem with this commercial item.