Hello Redpoint5,
Your an EV fan? I would not have known that from your comments on this thread.
ICE is equivalent to the electric motor. If fuel is equal to the battery pack, show me how to use petroleum without polluting or fractions of the pollution? (PV & wind energy source for EVs) Show me how you can re-use petroleum after it is burnt in the ICE?
I think the better analogy is that electricity and petroleum are the equivalents with the battery pack is the fuel tank.
You linked to an article that has missing data in its chart. Also, a trend is more than month to month sales fluctuations. You also show a chart that shows that BEV sales numbers will increase.
Processor speed is also not the only metric for processor advancement. Specialized chips, now at 7nm that are in phones are all 64bit. Just 5 years ago, most were still 32bit. These processors are doing more in the same clock cycles and with a lot less power. If you do not count that as advancement, then our metrics are never going to align.
Diminishing returns... until there is another big leap forward. I was saying that processors were going to slow down back in the 90s, just due to the limitations of getting reliable signal and electricity to flow at such small pathways... and those pathways are now considered oversized. They figured out ways to handle those differences. Like the 100 years advances that have been made with airplanes... time and money was spent and they improved. (same could be said about a lot of different technologies)
Well, we will see in 2 to 3 years if there is some introduction into the market of new battery technologies. We will also see if there is an increase in BEV sales.
Airplanes cost more to fly, in both real and unpaid for costs, than driving or train, yet people take airplanes more often than trains... If it was just cost, trains would win everytime.
Think of all the money spent to build airports, to expand airports, then all the money the government spends to run air traffic control (a cost the airlines mostly do not have to pay for). The system is rigged to support airlines and air travel here in the US. In other countries, not as much. Oh look, they have better train systems.
All improvements above the status quo could be considered a gimmick at first. 64 bit vs 32 bit processors were a gimmick to sell more complicated chips when there was almost no software to take advantage of 64bit... yet it is the standard now, even in phones and tablets.
US Federal Highway system is not required, it was only seen as needed by the military, to help move forces around quickly inside our country. The country actually was successful without them. All roads were maintained by states, counties, townships, or cities before that and the majority of roads still are.
I know about the population density of all those places, having lived in Korea or Indiana most of my life, with a short time in California and several visits (I have a child living in California), so? Most Scandinavian countries have a tiny population density, yet trains are still successful there... So population density is not needed nor a requirement for trains to be successful.
What it takes to make a rail system successful, like our highway system, is continuous investment to maintain and improve the system over time.
Depends on your metric for 'dominate'. No non-hybrid or EV is getting the headlines, so by that metric, they already dominate. For EV sales to outnumber ICE vehicles in the US, I think that will take several manufacturers producing EVs in mass. That will take time, and given the automotive industry, I would guess 10 years.
Like, the mid-engine Corvette should have been earth shattering, but most of the articles I read all mentioned how there could be a hybrid or EV version in the future. Like the midengine was just a stepping stone towards a hybrid or EV.
Stories like this, from a small town in Indiana, is why I think we are further along and closer than you to EV dominance by any metric. I did not think I was that optimistic, but I guess maybe I am.