The take up will depend a lot on government policy, subsidies, grants etc. Take Norway for example, their energy is 100% clean from wind and hydro, an electric Golf is a staggering $9000 cheaper than a diesel Golf. The government there is doing all they can to encourage EV sales, it's estimated 20% of new cars registered there are electric. Norway is a good model for the future of EV's.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/b...cars.html?_r=0

For Norway, where clean electricity is abundant and cheap, yes, EVs make a lot of sense! In the US, where 2/3 of electricity is generated by burning stuff, not so much. In Canada, it's even worse due to high electricity prices, and in Ontario, a province with the highest population (about 1/3 higher than the next guy) and which also has the highest electricity prices in all of Canada, an EV is a harder sell.

My understanding is that Iceland has free home heating and hot water due to their geothermal advantage. Few places have that advantage. Few places are like Norway.

Note that my statements merely highlight what is, and why there isn't universal rapid adoption of EVs. It's coming; just not as quickly as some folks think for us in North America, and more specifically, the US, the land of rivers of cheap oil (and wars to secure those rivers).

Just the facts M'aam. Take your imaginary scale and put the benefits of each choice on their appropriate sides.

Maybe I look at it differently.

Oil IS a solar fuel. The raw materials would not exist without the sun.

Climate Change. Explain to me how the change in atmospheric oxygen content from the 35% of the dinousaurs to the 20% of today, IS NOT CLIMATE CHANGE IMPOSSIBLE TO ATTRIBUTE TO HUMAN ACTIVITY.

Breathing causes Cancer, Quit breathing and cancer will not kill you. Keep breathing and you COULD die of Cancer.

IF you can predict the future WITH any reliability then you should be rich enough to do something about it.

Humans are fascinating animals! They don't believe they'll die from smoking, but they do believe they'll win the lottery. Similarly, many Americans cannot see a connection between humans and mass climate change, but they can see a suitable leader and wonderful human being in a Donald J. Trump.

Absolutely fascinating.

Sometimes, I say to those humans, "Regardless if humans have caused massive climate change, or contributed to it to some degree, doesn't it make sense for us to breath clean air, drink uncontaminated water, and live off land that is not poisoned?" They reply that we must balance those things with "economic practicalities."

Fascinating species. Just fascinating.

kind of out of context

From the end of the last age of the dinosaurs to today the oxygen content of the atmosphere has dropped from 35% to 20%. This change can not be attributed to human activity, since it occurred before human beings existed.

But no one is claiming the decrease in oxygen is the cause for global warming.

Yes, climate changes for reasons besides humans, but the carbon in the petroleum, coal, and other fossil fuels that is currently being burned has been locked up, and out of circulation from a time before the dinosaurs. We are putting it back into circulation as CO2, a known infrared absorber, at rate faster than most natural processes. The last time the planet saw such a fast rate of CO2 addition involved a lava field the size of Poland, and was a precursor to the Great Dying.

Thanks, everyone! I appreciate your efforts to keep this interesting discussion civil.

Today I used enough fuel to go 3.8 miles at 52.8 mpg. Yesterday it was 11.6 miles at 62 mpg.

At that rate today it would take one gallon of fuel to make 14 of those trips.

At yesterdays rate it would take a gallon of fuel to make 5.3 of those trips.

2.2 ounces of fuel per mile @ 128 ounces per gallon (US).

Two days a little more than one quart of gas (34 ounces).

That's my contribution.

Hmmm. I was wonderin' why the air smelled like an Irish spring, Gary.

Hey, Paul! Do you guys have a hand / bath soap called Irish Spring?

Your personnel contribution, but don't forget the US as a whole burns through the same amount of gasoline as every continent on the planet combined, almost 7,000,000,000 people, and some 20,000,000 barrels of oil a day. And that's before we consider fracking gas, coal etc....