Once customers can charge their EVs at home, the convenience factor turns up-side down; having to go to a gas station to fill a tank becomes an annoyance compared to easiness of simply plugging the cable in at home. But building the charing infra is an major undertaking especially in the cities: It requires upgrades of cities electricity networks, building charging infra on the streets and private car parks. All this will take time, money and most importantly incentives. Especially in advanced economies the governments should focus on incentivizing the buildout of the charing infra instead of subsidizing EV cars. There is a clear chicken-egg problem there (why build charger without EV cars? Why by EV without chargers?) plus plenty of vested interest to hang on the the past without future.

German car makers are already paying the price for their strategy to follow their scenario Excels forecasting a smooth transition. They chose not to join the EV bandwagon early enough to develop a competitive offering and let Tesla to grab a major market share and mindshare. As if Nokia did not provide them with a recent enough example to what happens to product industry leaders who choose to be laggards in modern-era global competition.

From environmental perspective EVs make sense only when the renewable energy production starts tuo build up. But wind+solar are already the most competitive energy generation methods and wind+solar production is rapidly increasing in both developed and leading developing economies. EVs are a perfect product to take advantage of the larger price variation the renewable buildout will inevitably bring.

The future is here. There is now going back.