Subject: Re: OT - EV battery discussion - solid state batteries
When you have this many living in dense urban areas, in apartments, condos, multi-family dwellings, even venturing out into the burbs, how will the electrical grid recharging infrastructure work in a time efficient manner? Folks have their cars parked underground or in rising multi-level tiers, or even offsite, so where to charge without lengthy delays, and without crawling all over each other? Apartments in the burbs…same thing…will they rollout charging stations accessible to all those dwelling in these condensed areas? I think it will be a huge mess.

Oslo is a city of around 700,000, with another 500,000 in the surrounding suburbs. That puts it in the same league as San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, or Nashville. Car registrations show a 40% ownership of EVs in Oslo proper, and a higher penetration in the suburbs. It isn’t “a big mess” by any stretch. This has mostly happened in the last 15 years, albeit with the kinds of incentives we are unlikely to see in this country (exemption from congestion pricing, able to drive in carpool and bus lanes, etc.)

but what about those who do not have that advantage?

There are public chargers, just as there are public gas stations. I was in Boston for Thanksgiving and saw several curbside parking stations. They were on streets where parking was allowed only at night (at least those that I saw), so they clearly would not draw current during the day. There are parking meters all over the place which run on electricity (credit card readers, etc.) so obviously there is power available at many places under the sidewalks, and putting new power lines in place is trivial with an auger boring ditch witch. (They’re using it to install new fiber in our neighborhood just this week.)

Again, key fact: 83% of US population lives in urban areas

That doesn’t mean 83% live in the concrete jungle. I have lived in “urban areas” in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Boston, and now Knoxville, and only in my 20’s was I in the vertical part of cities. There is a big difference between “urban area” and “urban core”. Yonkers, Scarsdale, and Eastchester are considered part of the New York Metropolitan area, yet have thousands of single family homes. And garages.

Critical mass?

People keep finding problems to solve which turn out not to be much of a problem at all, at least based on the places which have - or are - solving them even as the tide rolls on.