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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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I’m not in the know on this. How might one play devil’s advocate? Aren’t they still considered to be too expensive for most people? The electric grid ready?
They are too expensive. But only because auto manufacturers are only making midsized and larger suvs or luxury cars. The average price of an EV has dropped over 50% in China since 2015. That would have been tough for us to match, mostly because of batteries, but we could have made much more progress than we have.
The electric grid isn't nearly as unprepared as people say. Sure, we need to build out more charging stations, but the grid as a whole far exceeds current needs. In fact, nationwide electrical usage is actually trending down in the US because of efficiency gains. Better building codes, heat pumps, LED lighting, if it uses electricity newer stuff is more efficient. If we had sold 8 times as many EVs in 2023 than we did, electricity usage would have stayed about flat.
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/02/02/the-us-added-1-2-million-evs-to-the-grid-last-year-electricity-use-went-down/
You sound informed, more so than I. The heat pump thing confuses me, and I've seen it a lot lately.
I was under the impression that the vast majority of homes were using a heat pump system. Seems like a no-brainer? Is this not so?
EDIT: My HVAC is labelled a "heat pump" and no one around here had natural gas.
A increasing percentage of new construction gets heat pumps. Some replacement HVAC units make the switch, but there is still a large portion of people who won't because of misinformation and/or stubbornness.
But, unfortunately, most existing residential systems do not use heat pumps, under 20% in the US I believe.