No easy way to say this, our way of life in America, where a car truck or SUV about the only practical way of getting around, excluding a few locals in America like NY, NY where a subway system exists, or the Bay Area Rapid Transport System in California, most cities & suburbs in USA, noting vast landscapes of USA are connected by highways, freeways, roadways of all kinds into neighborhoods of nothing but thousands of single family homes, possibly apartment buildings or condominium complexes, not matter how you cut it, nearly all of the trucks, ships, buses, airplanes, cars, SUV, motorcycles, motor scooters, excluding the latest somewhat expensive and very rare lithium ion battery electric vehicles.
Noting Tesla Model 3, S, X, Y or any Electric Car SUV or Truck, but how do you charge an electric car during a grid power outage, a question posed to me by an elementary school student, noting her parents only consider PHEV, HEV or conventional gasoline or diesel powered vehicles, having been cheated by a fading lithium battery in their former Nissan LEAF, where range rapidly decreased, making it virtually useless.
I had the same experience with multiple generations of Nissan LEAF, where after a few years that new battery range starts to rapidly decline as the fading lithium battery weakens, something many owners of smartphones who keep their phones for more than 3 years also tend to experience, reduced battery life, or having to charge more frequently since it runs out of juice faster than it did when it was new. In the USA we consume around 400 million gallons of gasoline daily. The 20th century, not just in America, nearly the entire global population underwent more change in the last 50 years than society changed in the previous 50,000 years. In terms of energy, the transportation portable energy solution winner is a liquid hydrocarbon mixture with up to 10% ethanol sold at millions of gas stations in America.
Or, if you're lucky to live in a station like The Grange, Issaquah, Washington State, they sell Ethanol Free or Pure Gasoline, unleaded. The only leaded gas still sold in America sold at small municipal airports as 100LL for piston powered aircraft, where TEL or tetraethyl-lead acts like a lubricant & knock reducing agent, but of course that puts lead into the exhaust gas emissions of such machines. I think the last country to sell leaded gasoline for automotive use was Algeria, but even they went to unleaded gasoline in 2011, correct me if I am wrong, but that's what I remember when researching unleaded gasoline history so many years ago.
If you own a car, fueling it at gas station typically takes less than 10 minutes, often less than 5 minutes, charging a 100-300kWh EV battery pack in under 10 minutes requires a Level 5 very expensive specialized custom made low volume very high power multi-megawatt commercial electrical connection, heavy, material intensive, liquid cooled cabled, direct DC at up to 1000 volts and 1000 amps. Noting that Level 4 charging at up to 350,000 watts at Tesla Supercharging stations already a very high power fast charge, & in many instances at home only a Level 2 circuit of 40 amps 240 volts serves up about 30 miles of range per hour of charging, dryer oven welder 14-50 outlet style, 2 breaker switches, 8-3 or bigger wiring, expensive to install if electrician does it, also going to Level 3 at home, requires a commercial power connection 3 phase, and while a Utility company can hook that up at your house, it will cost more than your EV to setup, including the Level 3 charger, noting that even EVSE level 1 on a regular power outlet at 115v 15 amps, you can typically slow trickle charge an EV adding about 3-7 miles of range per hour of overnight charging in your driveway or garage.
Creating a gas station gasoline refill speed EV quick charge challenging also because shoving DC at high amperage high voltage into BEV battery pack will cause the battery to heat up, which damages lithium-ion batteries faster. Noted in the owner's manual of Nissan LEAF that regular use of Fast DC Level 3 will causing loss of capacity to accelerate, reducing range more quickly, damaging the battery faster, causing degradation of the battery cells from rapid heating of Level 3 charging.
Gasoline & Diesel are liquids are normal temperatures from sub-freezing to summer hot, & very easy to store in large tanks at gas station, and easy to pump though metered payment terminal hoses into your part, when your remove the filling station hose handle from the payment meter & insert the filling nozzle into your vehicles gas tank filling port, often behind a door that opens by switch or lever pull or button press. Many newer filling handles have a vapor recover spring loaded black think that requires carefully shoving the filling nozzle into the filler port & then locking it into place become activating the flow leaver to dispense fuel into the vehicles gas tanks, possibly using the leaver lock to keep it flowing without holding the handle, until your vehicles gas tank is full. All of this including debt or credit card payment, fueling, restoring hose filler to holder, closing your fuel cap & door, can happen in less than 10 minutes, often faster than 5 minutes. Sending 100-300kWh of energy into a batter pack that quickly fraught with engineering challenges of many kinds, making it vasty more expensive & more rare, newfangled EV tech, similar high technology wealthy OECD battery electric vehicle charging stuff.
In America diesel fueled class 8 trucks move about 99% of all the essential critical food, materials, goods of all kinds, thus making truck drivers the unsung heroes of the US Economy. In many parts of the OECD truck powered by diesel fuel are similar, CDL holders drive mega mass of every kind of think from ports to retail locations or factories or whatever. People driving cars on roads then access Costco, stock up on food or other goods, then drive home, people drive to work or school, or they take a bus municipal or school bus to get too & from, noting that trains exist in America, but not that many train routes are practical or available nearby or even feasible to use, as going that far, more than 500 miles, it usually makes the most sense to fly, in a passenger aircraft, where you buy tickets ahead of time, then leave 3 hours before your flight to get to the airport with your baggage, usually clothing & toiletries, to get through security, to the correct terminal, load the plane, taxi in it to the runway, then enjoy takeoff full power noisy vibration, cruise tour bus style, then land & do the reverse at the next airport, take a cab or rental car to your final location.
Welcome to America, its not Tokyo Japan or Osaka, where a rail pass can get you almost anywhere you want to go. In America its fossil fueled transportation with a sprinkling of BEV's driving around in posh locations where high income people can buy the latest Lucid Air, Mecedes EQS or Tesla Model whatever as lithium ion battery electric vehicle.
I personally drive a Toyota Corolla Hybrid Sedan LE & its energy storage module is a 4AH 207v Lithium-Ion Automotive Long-Life Hybrid Battery, that Toyota designed to last 20 years of use in the Corolla Hybrid, largely similar to the 3rd Gen Prius with its NiMH battery of 6ah 201.3v that works better in very cold weather, they even have the same 2ZR-FXE engine, but 22 Corolla Hybrid has a 9th generation revision of 2ZR-FXE, mostly thermal improvements, like the polymer intake manifold that insulate the engine block better than the previous aluminum intake manifold, which sucked heat out of the block, since aluminum has extraordinary thermal conductivity, the same reason computer chip heatsinks are usually made of machined aluminum.
I live in a temperate location where it rarely snows anymore, thanks climate change, it does still snow sometimes, I even have chains for my car, just in case. I use the chains when I drive up to the local ski resort to go snowboarding, because the front wheel drive hybrid Corolla has to have tire chains to drive in deep snow at the ski resort parking lot. Noting that if its snowing all day while I am up snowboarding, I also have to use a shovel to remove all the snow that has buried car in a pile of snow, which can take up to an hour of labor at the end of the day, after exercising hard snowboarding, it's a grueling ordeal, and I am now in my twenties anymore, when that was a lot easier. This Corolla Hybrid Sedan LE averages 58.3 miles per gallon for the last 20,000 miles of operation, about 15% better fuel economy than Meg's 3rd Gen 2010 Prius which still incredibly works, despite almost 200,000 miles ODO now.
In both cases, her Prius & my Corolla, operate exclusively on gasoline, the hybrid part just capture energy with regenerative braking and similar to enable great energy economy with many modes of strong hybrid operation, Toyota's proprietary HSD hybrid synergy drive, where PSD powder split device mixes engine power with two electric motor generators, one optimized for energy recovery, the other optimized for traction power, known as a Strong Hybrid Drivetrain design, it lacks a traditional transmission, varying the speed of the wheels by big orbital gears in the Power Split Device or PSD connected by shafts for torque output or energy recovery to the front wheels, tires & ultimately roadways, usually asphalt made of tar mixed with rocks, sometimes concrete.
I wonder, in cold weather, icy roads, all the heat from all the engines, hot exhaust pipes down low, leaking heat from engine block, I wonder how much road warming all that combustion actually accomplishes, not entropy can be described as the Head Death of the Universe where there is no difference between hot & cold anymore, effectively all heat has diffused to a universal warm. What about all those tailpipe emissions & what they are doing to public health or health of Earth's atmosphere, in the context of climate change or acid rain forming or emissions controls applied to automobiles sold in America, noting that vehicles sold in other countries are not requires to be fitted with O2 sensors & catalytic converters as emissions control laws vary significantly worldwide.
This makes it possible to sell cheaper versions of vehicles in countries with fewer regulations. I have a $6K new Yamaha MT03 motorcycle with full emissions controls, that sells for half as much in India without any advanced emissions controls, but otherwise identical. Mentioned as an example of how the same motorcycle costs a lot more in America because of the complex advanced emissions controls required bt law, clean air act, but in India no such regulations exist, so Yamaha sells the same motorcycle without all complex emissions controls in India, for half the price that I had to pay in America, noting that vehicles without emissions controls being used daily in many cities in India are making those cities smell very bad with air pollution, where most cities in America have much less air pollution from traffic because nearly all the fuel burning vehicles operating in America are equipped with advanced emission control systems.
The Economy of America depends on fossil fuels at nearly every level, advanced society nearly impossible to function without reliable grid power, natural gas, and access to gasoline at many gas stations. We can't produce enough lithium metal in the entire global mining supply chain to make enough lithium ion batteries to produce enough BEV's to replace even the fossil fueled cars, trucks and SUV's of America, noting that America is only about 400 million people, of a 8.368 billion people worldwide, also that only 1 in 4 adults who wants a car, owns a car of any kind, the overwhelming vast majority of which, almost 2 billion cars, are exclusively fueled by gasoline, unleaded, sold any of many of millions of gas stations worldwide, outside of America, not sold by the gallon, but gasoline sold by the liter or L. A gallon US about 3.7 liters.
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