I understand it was always an appealing choice to a small subset of customers (have charging stations at home / work, only travel relatively short distances, etc) but all the disadvantages of EV that people are pointing out now were even worse a few years ago – like high purchase prices, range concerns, batteries underperforming in cold weather, lack of infrastructure, repairability etc.
What was the actual driver behind the massive EV boom?
In: Engineering
Cell phones.
Seriously! Stick with me…
Lithium ion batteries revolutionized and made EVs possible, by giving them 5x the energy and power that lead acid batteries have. And those batteries were only developed and had their manufacturing scaled up due to the rise of cell phones.
A lead acid EV is able to drive 40 miles – lithium ion can drive hundreds. A lead acid EV accelerates like a golf cart, a lithium ion EV accelerates like a rocket ship. This is truly the technology (and price) breakthrough that allowed EVs to become viable, and lead to them becoming mainstream.
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