Article from WSJ on electric vehicles viability:
"Many optimists think falling battery costs mean electric vehicles (EVs) will inevitably displace the internal combustion engine (ICE). Last week, Bloomberg predicted electric cars would become “price competitive” with ICE cars in eight years without subsidies.
But such scenarios hinge not just on the cost of batteries but on the price of oil and the efficiency of competing vehicles. Economists Thomas Covert, Michael Greenstone and Christopher Knittel, in an article for the Journal of Economic Perspectives, estimate that at the current battery cost of $270 per kwh, oil would have to cost more than $300 a barrel (in 2020 dollars) to make electric and gasoline equally attractive. If battery costs fall to $100, as Tesla Founder Elon Musk has targeted, oil would have to average $90.
That could happen. But optimists “overlook the compensating effect of incumbent technology,” says Kevin Book, of ClearView Energy Partners, an advisory firm. He notes, for example, the spectacular decline in natural gas prices that hydraulic fracking has made possible. Global oil reserves have repeatedly defied predictions of shrinkage as industry innovation expands what can be recovered. And internal combustion engine efficiency typically rises 2% a year.
ClearView says that in an optimistic scenario, where battery costs fall 10% a year starting now and gasoline begins at $5 a gallon, electric vehicles will be competitive in five years. If battery costs fall just 5% a year and gasoline starts at $2.25, it will take more than 20."
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Electric vehicles are meant to be recharged at night. Economists Joshua Graff Zivin, Matthew Kotchen and Erin Mansur note in a 2014 article in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization that
night is when electricity is most likely to come from burning coal. They estimate electric vehicles account for more carbon dioxide per mile than existing cars in the upper Midwest, where coal-fired plants are more prevalent, and more than comparable hybrids in most of the country."
" it has relied on extensive public subsidies and, second, it has done little to reduce planet-warming emissions of carbon dioxide. If electric cars are ever to displace gasoline engines without government putting its thumb on the scale, they must not only keep innovating but outrun fossil fuels where productivity also keeps advancing."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-cars-are-the-future-not-so-fast-1499873064