This is a good instinct but, FWIW, I'm think there's a good chance we're going to see scale-up costs drop by about an order of magnitude over the next 5 years via fairly straightforward use of ML to reduce on scaleup test iterations. (For readers without context: to scale up battery production you start by making a few grams of materials in a lab, then a few kilograms, then a few tons. At each step there are failures and you have to iterate on production parameters, testing can take a long time as well. Sometimes the whole effort fails). At my last job we worked on this and saw good results, but productionizing them was a ways off.
The electrical infrastructure for mass deployment of this sort of thing will really be interesting.
> XPeng's new S4 ultra-fast charger, first announced in late 2021, is an 800 volt class EV charger with a peak power output of 480 kW (at up to 670 A and at over 700 V).
You will need definitively a new electrical installation to use that at home, and many safety measures to ensure morons are not fried.
When you need to fast charge, you should go do it at a charger.
The efficiency of electricity is also more hype than reality. If it is coming from fossil fuel power plants, it is not notably more efficient nor green. If it is from renewable energy, then you need to solve the problem of energy storage, which ironically is most easily solved via hydrogen. Nevermind the fact that you have to deal with the upfront energy needed for battery production, undermining the argument in a big way.
And of course, nothing is more efficient than not driving at all. Mass transit and walkable neighborhoods should be the main goal of green transportation. Cars are mostly a distraction and should not be emphasized. We only tolerate them because not every transportation problem can be solved in that way. They are the fallback solution.
As a fallback solution, hydrogen cars make a lot of sense, especially for those who can't justify an EV. Certainly more sensible than demanding only EVs for all cars.
