All this begs the question of why first the train and then the motor car became popular.
Simply because they delivered more, for less effort. You can ride dobbin cross country, but in terms of communications it was better to ride him on a road, and as for goods transport, carts need roads. So roads already existed.
Train tracks did not, but the huge speed and power advantage of a steam engine over dobbin - either pulling a cart or pulling a barge - meant there was a massive commercial pressure to build them. And, once built, people wanted to travel in them. It was easier and quicker than a stage coach.
I was there in the post war years when cars went from being an expensive luxury for rich people, to being the means by which everyone travelled simply because they were reliable, within budget and way faster than any public transport, because they ran when *you* were ready, not to a schedule, and they ran door to door, not station or stop to station or stop.
It is not for no reason that 'car culture' is lionized in popular music of the American 50s and European 60s...
"Oh Lord, won't you buy me, a Mercedes Benz..."
The drive to BEVS is being driven not by popular choice but by gross market distortion and a faux moral imperative. Nice though some of the aspects are, the batteries are simply not good enough for all but niche applications.
A one thousand mile battery would solve all the issues. People do not drive 1000 miles with no break for sleep and recharge, and even truck drivers are only allowed what - 9 hours per day? 56 hours per week...or
90 hours per fortnight.At 90km/h - around 55 mph, so at best they can manage 3,000 miles in a week, at a duty cycle of 33%. with a worst case ten hour stint twice a week., So they are limited *by law* to 550 mile stints. With 14 hours to sleep between them. Given suitable charging at truck stops 1000 miles of battery would be fine for them, as well.
I think the longest stints I ever did in one go was 900 miles at an average of 60mph. With a ferry crossing in the middle. Peak speeds in excess of 130mph.
1000 miles would suit that especially with a rapid recharge on the ferrySo, it is easy to see that if sensibly priced BEV technology with 1000 mile range existed, there would be queues in the showrooms. Even 600 miles would be enough for most people. The fact is that is simply not there, and BEV sales are driven by legislation, not be being a more attractive solution, except to the intra urban middle class, with garages in which to charge a second car that never goes further than the local school or supermarket.
As for issues of heating and cooling, 5kW is enough for any sane location and with a 50kwH battery that's only a 10% range reduction, less with bigger batteries, and almost meaningless with a 1000 mile battery. Everything about electric cars is fine and dandy,and vastly superior to a fuel car, except the sodding batteries.
And they are tantalisingly close, but in reality we need the capacity per unit weight up by a factor of at least three while the costs come down that much...and I simply dint see the potential to achieve that with existing technologies.