They're talking about stopping sale of them in 2040, that's 23 years time. In 1994 average petrol price was 48.9p, now it's about 110, an increase of 125%, if that continues it'll be about £2.50/litre by 2040 and nobody will be able to afford to run petrol cars anyway.
The people that won't be able to afford a new electric car won't be able to afford new petrol cars either so that's not really an issue (plan is to stop sale of new ICE cars rather than ban existing ones)
Realistically how many people actually go from Carlisle to London regularly? Currently several EV manufacturers offer a free loan car a number of times a year for those occasions when you do need to go further, and as batteries improve the fast charging will improve, you can currently charge a Tesla to something like 90% in half an hour.
The biggest problem in my opinion is the national grid generating capacity, and the exotic metals currently used in batteries, however the latter one is likely to be fixed in the near future with a lot of new developments, for example the experimental Graphene based one with 5 times the energy density of a Lithium Ion capable of being fully charged in a few minutes. Aluminium Air batteries are a bit weird though in being a bit like a fuel cell in some ways, in that they do slowly use up the aluminium, and apparently can be recharged by adding new salt water.
Edited by ChrisG, 26 July 2017 - 06:51 pm.
1992 Mk1, 76k miles, Hagon springs, MTC exhaust, 4½ gears Gone now
2009 900 abs, 42k miles, Yamaha heated grips, double bubble screen, R&G crash bungs, scottoiler, Autocom, 1500 lumen LED spotlights.