FishyJoe wrote:
I expect by 2025, electric car technology will have advanced enough to render these standards largely irrelevant. Electric cars will be faster, cheaper and more reliable. There will still be specific use scenarios for ICE cars, but those will probably be hybrids anyways.
I don't think anyone would argue that in 8 years, electric cars will be faster, cheaper and more reliable than they are now. The same would be true for ICE vehicles as well, although the improvement curve will not be as steep for ICE cars. Technology very rarely goes backwards.
However, I am not sure how that gets you to CAFE standards will be irrelevant in 7 years. Electric car sales in 2018 are at best1.5% of total vehicle sales. Even if they could make astounding gains (say grow sales 50% per year, every year for next 7 years), they would only represent 20% of new vehicle sales and still only 5-10% of the operating fleet.
There have been huge government subsidies to get to this 1.5%, the subsidies cannot continue if sales increase. When the subsidies go away there will be a large impact on sales because without the subsidies, EVs are not competitive at all. You are also forgetting the infrastructure problem, sure there is lots of "free" charging available now (basically as a promotion). When charging eventually goes to fee based (as it must), there will be another large barrier to further growth.
Simply put, short major government intervention (mandating widespread EV use), electric cars will have to be objectively cheaper, higher-performance and or more desirable than ICE cars to gain significant market share. I don't see this happening in the next 10 years, .
When an electric vehicle can complete the Daytona 500 without replacing the batteries is when I will say ICE makers need to get worried. If I was a major ICE manufacturer I would lobby to let Tesla race in the Indy 500, because they would either DNF and/or have to make excuses about why they couldn't compete. Either scenario would be funny to see Musk's juvenile reactions.