I haven't hear that 'it's' been a couple of years a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, sales of EVs are ramping up faster every year, so these second-hand vehicles must be appearing somewhere on the market even if you haven't seen them.
Indeed, a couple of years ago it was probably a car of in a couple of years we'd see the volumes to see a good number of seconds hand cars in a couple of years.
At 9% EV's this year (and likely to be higher again next year) it's now likely that in 3 or 4 years there'll be a good crop of end of PCP EV's available that are sub 5 years old.
Even 18 months ago EV's were less than 5% and you don't need to go back much further for sub 1% figures.
If that rate of growth continues then there's unlikely to be all that many pure ICE (and certainly pure Diesel, which is already lower than EV's) by the time the ban on their sale (new vehicles) comes into being.
My issue with charging points is whether they will expand in line with the volume of electric cars unless charging costs rise significantly.
For example a service station - having a handful of chargers is probably ok at the moment, but will they have a charger on all the hundreds of parking spaces that are used at peak times but empty a lot of the rest of the time (And could the grid even power that with service stations usually being out in the sticks)?
Same question applies to supermarkets and even more to pubs and restaurant.
Two more trivial questions
Why do EVs have huge wheels - the VW Golf equivalent has 19” wheels!?
Why are the RAC saying they can tow EVs because they have trailers lifting all four wheels - why is that needed?
Services will adapt to changing markets, however if you fill up with petrol at a services you'll be charged a lot more than at the supermarket which is an extra few miles off your route.
Whilst there will be demand for rapid chargers, there'll also be demand for the route of chargers which are at the upper end of what you can have at home. As there'll be those who "need" coffee more frequently than their car needs charging and so can opt to top up by (say) 15 miles rather than needing 100+ miles.
Also expect the way we do things to change, for instance a drive through. McDonald's already are offering order by app and being it to your car rather than needing to drive to the window to collect. That new system would allow you to park up, plug in, order and get your food without going in. It also allows them to build their sites in a different way to the way that they did in the past (where a road was needed all the way around the building). Such changes are just at the start of the change, however are likely to be mainstream by the time significant numbers of cars are EV.
Likewise I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a shift towards smaller service stations, with a single (say) Starbucks located within a mile or two of an existing motorway junction (most likely along a secondary route to still pick up a decent amount of passing trade). As the need to serve everyone at a one stop shop becomes harder to do (not just due to EV charging).
People are already picking which services that they stop at based on food/coffee choices, with a car which could tell you this along your entire route and matches this with your need to charge your car someone who likes Costa could hop from one to another whilst someone who wants Starbucks could do likewise and neither need to darken the door of the other chain. You could even hop between Farm Shops or other independent high quality foodie outlets.
It shouldn't be hard to educate you navigation system of your preferences rather than relying on your knowledge of what's at each services or knowing that this farm shop cafe is similar to what you enjoy locally to your home that you'll likely enjoy it (and with the option to downgrade the likelihood of it being suggested again so the system learns more about your tastes and provides better suggestions in the future).
By customising what you want the need to pull up at a services with 500 spaces and need a rapid charge (along with the other 450 cars there) then shrinks rapidly. In doing so the need for massive infrastructure capacity in a few locations then starts to fall and the grid is more likely to be able to cope.
For instance, for a fairly small time penalty why stop at Exeter services when you can use IKEA or Tesco (both add a few minutes compared to using the services) knowing that the fastest chargers are less likely to be needed (IKEA is likely to have lots of people there for a couple of hours, whilst Tesco is likely to have quite a lot of people only using a small top up as it's there and free and being there for longer than 30 minutes).
The way we do things will change, the problem is that until it does most complaints about EV's are based on what we currently do. Now some changes will be both annoying and helpful (such as being forced to take a break in a 4 hour journey, and thus making us a safer driver).
Others may mean that we go out more to meet with people. For instance, it maybe that someone would do a day trip to somewhere a few hours from home and then go and seeing friends/family for an evening/overnight before going home again.
With the change to booking into accommodation later in the day (due to Covid) it could well be that someone from (say) Kent on their way to Devon starts off fairly early, has a day out at Longleat and gets to their accommodation around 8pm (using a key safe to get in).
In doing so, they miss the worst of the traffic, their holiday starts earlier/finishes later and have no issues with range on their EV. In doing so it's arguably better than what happens now, it's just that by being forced to do it the way they holiday shifts a little. However with an ICE car nothing would change and they would just sit in horrendous traffic, as that's what everyone else does as they can't get into their accommodation before 4pm.
I'm not saying that would meet everyone's need, rather that such changes could likely change the way things are done by enough that for those who carry on as they always have will still be able to do so.
