There are really three major obstacles for electric vehicles from this writer’s perspective. All of them are difficult to overcome and it will take time. The three obstacles are Resistance to change, Installing Public Electric Charging Stations, and time to recharge batteries. We will explore each of these in more detail. However many people would argue that the lack of electric charging stations is a big impediment. With only 10,000 electric vehicles in Quebec and 5000 in Ontario, there is not much incentive to install charging stations.
Resistance to Change
Consumers are pretty happy with their gasoline and diesel-powered cars. They like the features, the flexibility and the ideal they can fill up anywhere and pretty much at any time. It only takes a few minutes as well to fill up the gas tank. The only negative is the cost of rising gasoline prices. At the time of writing, this post is pretty flat and not hurting people in the wallet.
Installing Public Electric Charging Stations
There are simply not enough charging stations around. Although more are being installed every week, the numbers do not begin to approach the availability of gasoline stations. They’re also at the present time little financial incentive for dealers to install charging stations. Time will solve this problem, but right now it is a huge impediment.
Time to Recharge Batteries
Another big negative is the time to recharge the batteries. A consumer will need at least a few hours or even overnight, depending on the charging station capacity. Compared to five minutes this really just does not work. Tesla has tried to deal with this issue by providing a battery swapping service which cuts down the time significantly. It will be many years before this service is widespread.
For more interesting posts about electric vehicles, click here.