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Originally Posted by Solecismic
The 250 million... never heard even close to that elsewhere. The goal, I thought, was 20 million by 2030. But that would require an investment of about $5,000 per EV in new technology just to upgrade the grid. Who pays? The taxpayers - again to support the wealthy.
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Some points are being conflated here. Unless I miss what you are referring to, the point I referenced is the grid being capable of supporting 150 million vehicles. Not having that by any set date.
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Originally Posted by Solecismic
all I've found is from groups that in their mission statement indicate that bias - I'm not OK with that - they're the ones demanding this expensive transformation
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This is one of the key points. You can't just assess the transformation cost in isolation. It's incredibly cheap compared to the alternative. Our current reliance on oil is not sustainable, full stop. That's even if we don't care about the environmental damage. The choice isn't 'EV or status quo'. Status quo isn't an option. Hydrogen at present is a worse alternative. What other serious candidates do we have?
On the bias ... I would say it's like having a bias in favor of gravity. Should we be taking studies from flat earther's seriously? There's a point at which there's an entry-level requirement - particularly when this discussion begin as a comparison of emissions, which is an assumption that it actually matters what emissions are higher and what are lower - of accepting certain scientific realities. If someone thinks we have practically infinite oil on the planet or that it doesn't matter how much we pollute, no they aren't ever going to be convinced. But I would also say those are scientifically unserious positions.
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Originally Posted by Solecismic
Ultimately, this is going to be very expensive - personal transportation may no longer be an option for poor people - which might make upward mobility very difficult in many areas. And it's going to involve a lot more government control over our daily lives. Most of all, it's going to put billions of people into energy poverty, when reliable energy is what has fueled the incredible increase in our quality of life over the last 100 years.
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This is a lot of presumption to be frank. More government control is not inevitable. The power grid could be changed in ways that do that and which are unstable. It could also be changed in ways that are not, which is one of many reasons why I agree with you on nuclear power. If it's done badly, sure that's a problem. But the answer to that is 'don't screw it up', not 'don't even try to do it well'. There simply is no good reason why it has to put people into energy poverty.
If I was trying to come up with a good way to do
that, I would keep us as reliant on oil as possible. If you want a worldwide economic disaster, that's the best and most reliable way to make that happen. It feels to me like the big objection here centers around 'why can't we just keep things the way they are'. Answer; again leaving aside the environment, that is just not sustainable. We are going to run out of oil at the prices and volume it is available now, we are already seeing the beginnings of that, it is going to get
much worse before we are ready for it at our current pace of transition away from it, and barring a magical invention of some kind it is an inevitable crunch. We have a very long track record now of decades now not having a single year finding as much oil as we are using, and we see all the time whenever there is a moderate spike in oil prices how vulnerable we are to not running out, but relatively minor fluctuations in supply.
The expensive option is not transforming, by multiple orders of magnitude. We'd all like a better option than EVs I presume, but it's the best choice we have by far and we are decades behind where we need to be as it is. There isn't time to wait for something better.