meic wrote:We will still be able to buy fossil fuel powered cars that are hybrids in some way
I'd imagine there will be a move to full electric( suitable for many urban commutes ) but with more use of biofuels in place of fossil fuels. But then there is contention for fuel versus crops plus the risk of de-forestation etc in other parts of the globe. There has to be a strong second hand market for the people who don't wish to pay extortionate amounts for a vehicle because it's new technology. That brings in the issue of reaching the 80% life of the battery for the 2nd hand buyer. The cost of batteries being another issue. Lots of issues to resolve it's early days. But 2040 most of us will be dead
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Another aspect is the demand for lithium as electric vehicle demand increases, there are limits to the current reserves and I think new areas to be discovered, but some are too costly to mine. Similar to oil in some ways, many wells have vast amounts remaining but innaccessible. The end of life batteries may see action in grid smoothing in domestic applications, the R+D on this is very active and Brian Fox mentioned it earlier. Lot's of recycling to be done beyond that.
I still think we have a good future but still think we need to change our thinking of transport and reduce excessive wasting of energy. Lighter more energy efficient vehicles, longer lifetime vehicles and batteries. HGV's are an issue to be addressed as that would be a very difficult full electric vehicle( battery wise, unless you dedicate a huge amount of load weight/cargo loss to batteries ) but they may stay as IC for a time to come. Thinking about it we could have a tram style electrification, overhead with lorries using pantographs and switching to battery use off motorway, pie in the sky, or copy the daleks. For personal transport I don't see the logic of accelerating larger and larger cars, you get a some mass related energy back on regen braking but I'd prefer lighter lower power requirements.
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