I Give Electric Car 10 Years, Tops.

 The reason for the title? Well, once people begin to live with electric vehicles long-term, as opposed to early-adopter with enough money to overcome issues, they will have a very short life-span.

It's pretty clear that electric vehicles with enough range and a battery charging network fast enough to compete with fossil fuel vehicles is pie-in-the-sky for ordinary folk.

Tesla will continue to lead the market for the while, until the other manufacturers band together to provide an open-source and unified charging network. 

I mean, who on Earth is going to spend hundreds of thousands on a premium top of the range Porsche or Bentley EV, only to rely on a pound-shop charging network.

A charging network that relies on multiple phone apps, chargers that rely on phone apps that don't work when there isn't any network coverage, are not a premium customer experience.

Each charging network should be forced by law to accept contactless direct payments by bank card. No apps, just tap and charge. In addition the ability to pay by PayPal, Google or ApplePay without signing up to yet another app would be a boon to personal security, rather than having a dozen different additional apps on your phone, with a dozen different providers holding your personal information including card information.

Like with pay at pump for fossil fuels, it may be necessary to authorise a higher charge than is eventually taken. But the £100 authorisation before dispensing fuel seems to not have stopped people using pay at pump.

However they do it, the charging network for non-Tesla EV owners needs to improve dramatically. It also need to expand dramatically as the tales of EV owners being fined for exceeding time limits in car parks whilst in the queue waiting to use a charging station are becoming almost daily now. 

Finally 10 years will give lots of EV owners the "joy" of the battery replacement experience at least once, maybe twice. Joy for those that have leased their battery and probably paid over the odds for it or the pain of buying a replacement battery outright from the dealer, if it's still available. 

I've already heard some EVs have have their batteries discontinued. I have no idea what you do then, apart from buying a few thousand Lipo cells and soldering them into a replacement battery bank.

But don't say I didn't warn you. I've a feeling there will never be a cheap EV. Sure the electricity to run it may work out cheaper than a tank of petrol for now, but even that's changing as the cost of electricity increases with the various eco-tariffs upping the cost.