People will vote with their feet and their wallets and electric cars will prove to last longer than conventional combustion power. Moreover, the predicted mineral shortage just doesn't appear on any horizon. With some major deposits in Australia.

Graphene may figure in future batteries or rapid charge capacitors and may be able to be produced as a manmade synthetic?

And let's not forget thorium, the most energy dense material on the planet and unlike oil or rare earths, found almost everywhere.

Why, just 8 grams costing $100 to recover and refine, would potentially power your house and car for 100 years? And that is just $1.00 a year!

Finally, there's a possibility of miniaturisation and thorium powering many electric vehicles, which won't need a refill for 100 years!?

Bring on the (allow) thorium-powered electric vehicles and planes, ships, trucks, trams and trains. And isn't someone working on an electric jet?

Bring on thorium and allow ordinary folk to get out from under the oil barons and their legendary, predatory, price gouging practises.
Alan B.

One for you one for me and so it goes with investors and their captive energy markets. Thorium will, methinks, put an end to that.

Imagine a thorium-powered house and car, with the house equipped with a dehumidifier, Able to pull up to 4,000 litres of pristine water directly from the atmosphere daily? Why one could live anywhere on earth!?

Eventually, man will discover and perfect antigravity and vehicles that hover inches or feet above the surface, be it land or water. And with that eventuality, freedom from oppression and dictatorial leaders.

I mean. one would 't need to leave home, just hit the antigrav and UP, to wherever? And given hydroponics, (completely sanitised recycling?) your basic, life-sustaining food supply as well?
Alan B.

"Why one could live anywhere on earth!?"
Don`t worry about that AB as Joh famously, or infamously, said.
At the rate we are trashing it with rampant overpopulation we won`t be able to anyway.
There is no planet B.

Has anyone ever seem any of these fearless forecasts by economists come to pass? Have they ever forecast the melt downs we have seen in recent decades? My forecast is they have got the expansion in EVs very wrong.

Even if we started now, we could not build enough generating capacity to supply the electrons that would be required.

If we were silly enough to try to do it with windmills, there will be no electric car boom, ever, assuming the general population is still permitted private car ownership.

Perhaps he is factoring in the fact that governments want us out of our cars. The push to self drive, probably rental cars, would be the leaver to get us out. A population with no personal transport, not capable of personally controlling a vehicle would be a population much more easily controlled.

Our grand kids are going to have to fight like hell, if they are going to enjoy the freedom, rights & pleasures that we have taken for granted.

Hi Hasbeen

Yes the projections being given in this article on EV growth are from a very low base.

And Australia's distances between major cities pretty much doom current full EV technology for everyday cars.

Industry claims of 400km range and Only 2 hours to recharge your battery are unhelpful for Sydney to Melbourne, Sydney-Brisbane, Perth or Darwin trying to go anywhere.

Good news.

Australia has the second highest Cobalt reserves in the world (1,200,000 tonnes) compared to Congo's 3,500,000 tonnes. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt#Production

And we'd be a much more politically stable supplier.

___________________________________________

And where the OLO article says ""Car producers may gradually substitute from cobalt to nickel over the next two decades"

Australia has the world's largest reserves of Nickel - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel#World_production scroll down to table.

Think of all the money we'll make!