'mass adoption' of EV's possible in 5-7 years?
After just watching Elon Musk’s P1 demonstration video posted a couple weeks ago (http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/), I’m very confident that this technology can be deployed and adopted rapidly within 5-7 years. The three remaining hurdles are: (1) a world-wide re-powering station infrastructure comparable to the existing gasoline station infrastructure, (2) a solution to the political nightmare of managing massive layoffs at traditional auto companies and (3) crafting acceptable deals with investor-owned and state-owned oil companies that would persuade them not to use their political power to slow the technological progression.
Shai’s supposed to be taking care of the first problem. Does anyone have any comments regarding the last two?
Layoffs and political nightmares
concerning (2)
The tratitional car maufacturers and also certain national economies (e.g. Germany) will run into massive problems if they do not adopt to new technologies, but I don't think that this may result in political nightmares. The opportunity is too high. Once if EV mass-production starts, a clear devaluation of residual values of existing fuel-powered cars will happen. This affects the leasing rates immediately, meaning that it has an impact on the company car business. This may result into a demand for battery-powered vehicles. If the auto industry has appropriate concepts in place, they are able to sell a new car for each existing one. And this creates a great long-term perspective for the workers. But... the auto-companies have to rethink which usually means layoff and re-hire.