Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...

[gnuarm]

I often hear how the UK has far too many cars parking on the street making it impossible to charge at home.  That's not actually the case, since level 2 charging can be placed anywhere, literally.  The cord can be with the car, leaving only a connector on the EVSE, so little opportunity for stealing the copper (much harder to do when in use). 

I know multiple people in my town who have no parking - they own cars, and they own a house or rent a flat, and have no assured place to park and with that, no place to charge a BEV except sitting at a (currently rare, mostly slow) public charger.

It is a problem, whether you want to admit it or not. One which must be solved, not handwaved away.

The problem is you can't imagine this will change.  BEVs are only just now entering the rapid sales growth, a bit like the inflationary phase of the universe after the big bang.  Expect a lot of things to change.  The one thing that will change the most is the appearance of level 1 or 2 charging at virtually everyplace where people park cars.  Level 1 charging is dirt cheap to install.  It's comparable to an outlet.  Level 2 charging is also not very expensive and can be installed everywhere there is a need. 

No one is "handwaving" away anything.  I'm just saying the present lack of overnight charging is not the huge, impenetrable roadblock that people try to make it out to be.

[tom66]

Indeed.  Some 50% of UK households do in fact have driveways so those are the 'easy pickings' for installing charging.

The other half will need a solution, and it's definitely harder to solve.   But in the meantime, what's holding that the first half back?  How can we make EVs more attractive for those guys?

[gnuarm]

Which "large percentage" of the population would find BEVs impractical? 

I often hear how the UK has far too many cars parking on the street making it impossible to charge at home.  That's not actually the case, since level 2 charging can be placed anywhere, literally. 

It is actually the case for those that have investigated it and say it's a problem. I hear this all the time.

So anecdotal and not anything we can actually debate.

I know people who have said it, and in some cases, have seen their actual living situtations myself, and I know it's true.
I don't want to debate it, it's a literal truth that many people do not have the ability to practically charge an EV. And it's often not easy to get such infrastructure installed due to physical access, cost, council regulations etc.

You can't claim "large percentage" based on a few of your friends.  That's what is meant by anecdotal. 

You are talking about the situation at this moment, as if it is impossible to change.  This is what I hear from lots of people in the UK.  It really makes me wonder if they are the same people who made so many advances in science and stood up to the Axis in WWII. 

This is such a trivial problem to overcome.  Yes, it is not worth debating.  If people can't figure this out, they deserve to be the last ones driving ICE when the rest of the world is clean.
 a43h2m_0_0[1].jpg (25.45 kB - downloaded 45 times.)

[gnuarm]

Which "large percentage" of the population would find BEVs impractical? 

I often hear how the UK has far too many cars parking on the street making it impossible to charge at home.  That's not actually the case, since level 2 charging can be placed anywhere, literally.  The cord can be with the car, leaving only a connector on the EVSE, so little opportunity for stealing the copper (much harder to do when in use).

People that live in apartments or other rented accommodations with assigned parking and landlords that will not permit the installation of chargers (often for totally legitimate reasons, b/t/w).  People who have a budget of under $10-15K for a used car and need a reasonable daily range.  Those two alone account for a pretty large swath of the US population.

The landlord problem is easy to solve.  In the US, in particular California, where most BEVs are bought, various regions have legislation that require landlords to cooperate with the tenants to install charging. 

As to the used car budget, there will be plenty of used BEVs in a few short years.  In the US, the average daily use is 40 miles.  There aren't any BEVs that can't manage twice that and even plug in hybrids (not really a pollution solution) can handle that.  I know someone who drives a PHEV just so he can charge from a 120V outlet and round trip to work every day without the ICE ever starting. 

Even L2 charging isn't free or anywhere near free once you price in the wiring to it.  Streetside charging, even if only outlets, is a pretty big capital outlay.  I'm not sure there is enough copper available.

LOL.  Ok, if you say so.

If you want to fly around the holidays, you need to book well in advance, otherwise you don't go.  That doesn't mean people buy their own airplanes.

They certainly do if they can afford them.  I would buy a Honda Jet if I could.  Unfortunately anything I could afford would only be recreational and not practical transportation.

Ok, you are in a different world than me. 

[sokoloff]

But in the meantime, what's holding that the first half back?  How can we make EVs more attractive for those guys?

For two car households, I think most could already have one pure-BEV. We've been doing that since late 2014 and only twice in that timeframe has it been even moderately difficult to work out a way for both adult drivers to get where they needed to go. (Once, I just hyper-miled/rolling-roadblocked my way to 96 miles on a charge. Just this week, my wife used a DC fast charger for the first time to get ~100 miles in a single trip where I needed to use the CR-V around the house and she had to go 100 miles away. [We have a LEAF, with perhaps only 75 miles of range now.])

The cost of acquisition is still a hurdle for some. I paid $8K for a perfectly suitable 5 year-old CR-V back in 2011. I paid $32K (before $10K in government handouts) for my LEAF in 2014. That's a good used vs a new car difference, but for a lot of people, that's the choice they're facing. I wouldn't willingly pay the current used price for a LEAF. [I'd also try to avoid paying the current used price for any car, but especially a LEAF.] I've spent a little over $4K in maintenance on the Honda and around $250 on the LEAF, with a fuel difference of about $6K, but an insurance difference against the LEAF of around $3.5K, meaning the Honda has still been slightly cheaper over the comparable period.

The ready availability (in normal times) of excellent functioning, reliable 5-year old used ICE cars at under 50% of original MSRP and the comparative dearth of 5-year old used electrics makes it hard for some to justify pulling the trigger.

If you're someone who leases a new car every 2-3 years, that's no factor. If you're someone who buys new cars every 3-5 years, that's no factor. If you're someone who wants to minimize their overall car costs, it's a pretty big factor still. To the extent that this is a reason, continued government purchase incentives is probably the quickest way to incentivize people to consider a new electric over a used ICE (as it changed my purchase behavior in 2014) AND to drive more used BEVs in the market in 2027.

[gnuarm]

Grid storage is not likely to be lithium based going forward.  Autos and other "mobile" devices have a specific need for high energy density, both by volume and by weight.  Grid storage does not.  Other battery technologies will dominate that market. 

Currently vanadium flow batteries are looking very good for stationary storage.  I just read something about a very large installation that is going in.  I believe it was in an article about how the technology was developed with US funds, and somehow ended up in a Chinese factory.  It seems that is being corrected with the license being pulled.

I think grid storage even being a battery is unlikely.

Convert it into hydrogen and store that at STP in natural gas caverns, then pull that hydrogen through a few "fool-cells" to make electricity.

Here's the big reason that is not a good idea, battery storage is between 80% and 90% efficient.  You can't get anywhere near that with hydrogen.  If your goal is to waste energy using expensive processes, then hydrogen is ideal. 

Or, convert that hydrogen into natural gas using Fischer-Tropsch, or ammonia using the Haber process, and then combust as necessary (carbon-neutral fuel, assuming the natural gas leakage is kept low enough.)

Now you are doubling down on bad ideas.  You need to keep in mind the goal of using renewable energy.  It is to reduce and ultimately eliminate pollution, mostly the carbon emissions of fossil fuels.  The processes you list above start with fossil fuels as feedstocks.  You could substitute synthetic fuel or biomass derived fuels, but the cost would be quite prohibitive.

Most countries that use natural gas have huge salt or geological caverns underground suitable for storing whole seasons worth of gas and it's typically at a low pressure.  Reuse what we have.

Where do you get the natural gas that doesn't make this a huge polluter? 

Small battery-packs will handle the hour-by-hour load management but I doubt they will ever do much more than that - e.g. for the UK you'd need a 960GWh battery for 1 day's electricity (assuming demand stays as is) - that's roughly enough to build 13 million Tesla Model 3's - and you'll need more than one day worth of storage if the grid is fully renewable.

It would be a very serious drought that left wind farms and solar farms with zero output.  Still, they will be producing 13 million BEVs for the USA alone by 2029.  I don't see why this makes it unreasonable to build vanadium flow batteries.  Remember that the lithium ion battery is chosen for mobile applications because of the high specific energy (energy per weight).  Stationary applications don't care about that and will be built at a far lower cost per kWh than lithium ion cells.  Read up about it.  If you want to invest money in battery technology, vandium flow batteries are going to be a bigger wave than lithium ion because of the huge demand from buffering intermittent energy sources. 

[gnuarm]

Indeed.  Some 50% of UK households do in fact have driveways so those are the 'easy pickings' for installing charging.

The other half will need a solution, and it's definitely harder to solve.   But in the meantime, what's holding that the first half back?  How can we make EVs more attractive for those guys?

By having them for sale, to start.  I don't know about the UK, but it's hard to buy a BEV in the US because they've all been sold.  Some models have a 1 year waiting list.  Automakers are ramping up literally as fast as they can. 

Hmmm... I wonder if BEVs will ever catch on?

[tom66]

By having them for sale, to start.  I don't know about the UK, but it's hard to buy a BEV in the US because they've all been sold.  Some models have a 1 year waiting list.  Automakers are ramping up literally as fast as they can. 

Hmmm... I wonder if BEVs will ever catch on?

Hah. True that... I think I remarked a few posts ago about the VW ID.4 having a 14 month lead time.  Well 2 year old ID.3s are selling for the same price as new.  Market is kinda screwed right now.

I'm going to wait a bit for those to drop... happy *enough* with my PHEV for now. 

[2N3055]

Indeed.  Some 50% of UK households do in fact have driveways so those are the 'easy pickings' for installing charging.

The other half will need a solution, and it's definitely harder to solve.   But in the meantime, what's holding that the first half back?  How can we make EVs more attractive for those guys?

By having them for sale, to start.  I don't know about the UK, but it's hard to buy a BEV in the US because they've all been sold.  Some models have a 1 year waiting list.  Automakers are ramping up literally as fast as they can. 

Hmmm... I wonder if BEVs will ever catch on?

Less than 1% of the 250 million cars, SUVs and light-duty trucks on the road in the United States are electric.
Percentage of BEV in sales of new cars is irrelevant.

https://graphics.reuters.com/AUTOS-ELECTRIC/USA/mopanyqxwva/

World figures are somewhere better, somewhere worse..

It is easy to talk about infrastructure when 1% of cars on road are BEV.
It is easy to say they will scale electricity production, high voltage distribution networks, millions of local transformer stations, hundreds of millions of chargers etc..etc... But making current BEV electricity infrastructure 50-100x larger than now is colossal undertaking...
Making 50-100x more batteries for BEV than now???

[nctnico]

No problem at all... in a dream fantasy 
The reality is that selling 50 BEVs instead of 25 is a 100% increase. And for sure there is a niche market segment waiting to be filled by BEVs. There are some rumours BEV sales are levelling off in the Netherlands because the market for BEVs starts to become saturated. We have to wait until the end of 2023 to draw some conclusions on that though.

[tom66]

No one says 100% BEV by tomorrow.  It will transition over the next 15-20 years.  There will still be ICE on the road in 2040.

The power generation argument is idiotic.  VW e-Golf is 4 miles per kWh... average let's say of 12,000 miles per year... So we need an extra 3,000kWh per car.

UK has 30 million cars - so extra generation of 90TWh.  Country generated 323TWh last year.

So yes... It is a lot... But also it is not that much - about 25% of total generation.  It seems completely feasible over the course of 20 years that generation could increase by 25%.  It will, after all, need to increase as gas heating is phased out.    The beauty of EVs is they can charge any time they are parked up, so they are great for soaking up excess renewables.

[nctnico]

I agree with the 25% number. However what worries me is whether electricity becomes a scarse commodity at some point. More scarse compared to keep using oil in very efficient hybrids. Switching to hybrids will already cause a huge decrease in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

Also keep in mind that under current EU regulations each BEV sold in the EU is equal to a car that emits 90 to 95 grams (don't know the exact number currently in effect) of CO2 due to the fact that car manufacturers have to meet a CO2 emission goal for their cars on average. IOW: for each BEV sold, an ICE car which emits more CO2 is being sold.

[2N3055]

No one says 100% BEV by tomorrow.  It will transition over the next 15-20 years.  There will still be ICE on the road in 2040.

The power generation argument is idiotic.  VW e-Golf is 4 miles per kWh... average let's say of 12,000 miles per year... So we need an extra 3,000kWh per car.

UK has 30 million cars - so extra generation of 90TWh.  Country generated 323TWh last year.

So yes... It is a lot... But also it is not that much - about 25% of total generation.  It seems completely feasible over the course of 20 years that generation could increase by 25%.  It will, after all, need to increase as gas heating is phased out.    The beauty of EVs is they can charge any time they are parked up, so they are great for soaking up excess renewables.

You might want to ease up on calling things idiotic, while ignoring data you don't like...

Generation IS a problem. But not the biggest one. Grid needs to be taken to the streets. And grid is NOT specified by kWh, but by peak power... THAT is the problem.

[nctnico]

@2N3055 I agree that charging infrastructure costs are the bottle neck which will cap BEV adoption at some point short term. Going to a central fast-charge station just like a gas station is a much more money-efficient solution because the infrastructure is shared by more people. But that will take a new type of batteries so it will not happen in the next 15 to 20 years.

[pcprogrammer]

Expanding the whole electricity infrastructure will take a lot of time. Take the Netherlands, there in the north solar installations are setup, whilst there is no sufficient grid infrastructure to transport the power. Due to politics the estimate is 8 years before new cables can go into the ground.

But that is just one of the problems. The earth has finite resources of everything. So the biggest question is are there enough for all the plans every government has to obtain the unobtainable goal of zero CO2 emission.

I have asked about the actual numbers in another thread, but no one seems to know. Categorized per system emitting CO2 what the actual values are. The main focus at the moment is on the car and the households using fossil fuels to run. Some say this only takes up a very small share in the total CO2 emission the human race is responsible for.

So is there a chart that shows how much CO2 a human or other big animal produces by eating and pooping, how much industry produces, how much house holds produce, how much cars produce, etc.

And further more is there actual proof that the CO2 is the true and only culprit for climate change? How about methane which is far more a greenhouse gas than CO2. Waste disposal sites in South America are emitting a but load at the moment.

My view on it all is that it is a desperate attempt to turn the tides and in the mean time keep up the growth economy.

Just my 2 cents.

[tom66]

You might want to ease up on calling things idiotic, while ignoring data you don't like...

Generation IS a problem. But not the biggest one. Grid needs to be taken to the streets. And grid is NOT specified by kWh, but by peak power... THAT is the problem.

No - sorry if I offended you, but the generation argument is parroted all the time by anti-EV zealots.  I'm not saying you are one, but I've heard it so many times, and it just doesn't make sense.  So it needs to die as an argument.

As for local grid upgrades, sure.  Loads of people charging 7kW at night would need to be accounted for, so we will probably see the upgrades being done there.  At the 11kV (local medium voltage distribution) there is almost certainly enough capacity.

It will depend especially on the distribution of cars and charging times ... For instance the average driver does like 20 miles per day so they only need 1hr of charging at 7kW for most cars.  With some delayed start, that could be charged almost any time between midnight and 6am, no capacity issue even if everyone does that (oven & electric hobs at 3-4kW at 6pm is not an issue already.)  But if people are charging up before summer holidays to go on a long road trip, and nearly every house is pulling 7kW... possible issue. Or if everyone on that street has a really long commute...e.g. a popular commuter town... then the average may not hold out so well.
 
One thing I've learned recently is there's a serious lack of monitoring at the secondary side of most of the UK's LV distribution - the DNOs (local network operators) often only know there's a capacity issue when fuses blow or transformers show excess wear upon periodic inspection.  That will probably change.  Fortunately one benefit of smart metering, I suppose, is that this can be monitored on a street-by-street level so it will be possible to figure out what needs to be done and where.

[pcprogrammer]

What you are forgetting in the equation of usage is that house heating also needs to shift to electricity with heat pumps to get of the gas, oil and coal.
This means another load on the grid, and during the night it tends to be colder then during the day, so the heater might run then. You would need a hell of a good communication system to control every system to get some proper load balancing.

So to fulfill this chosen path of everything electric a lot has to be engineered and thought through.

[nctnico]

You might want to ease up on calling things idiotic, while ignoring data you don't like...

Generation IS a problem. But not the biggest one. Grid needs to be taken to the streets. And grid is NOT specified by kWh, but by peak power... THAT is the problem.

No - sorry if I offended you, but the generation argument is parroted all the time by anti-EV zealots.  I'm not saying you are one, but I've heard it so many times, and it just doesn't make sense.  So it needs to die as an argument.

As for local grid upgrades, sure.  Loads of people charging 7kW at night would need to be accounted for, so we will probably see the upgrades being done there.  At the 11kV (local medium voltage distribution) there is almost certainly enough capacity.

It will depend especially on the distribution of cars and charging times ... For instance the average driver does like 20 miles per day so they only need 1hr of charging at 7kW for most cars.  With some delayed start, that could be charged almost any time between midnight and 6am, no capacity issue even if everyone does that (oven & electric hobs at 3-4kW at 6pm is not an issue already.)  But if people are charging up before summer holidays to go on a long road trip, and nearly every house is pulling 7kW... possible issue. Or if everyone on that street has a really long commute...e.g. a popular commuter town... then the average may not hold out so well.

I hope you see that there are lot of 'ifs' and 'depends' in what you write above. And that is exactly where the problem is: lots of unknowns! The most costly part of the grid is the last bit to your home (or charging point) because that is shared by the least number of people. Load balancing schemes are a crutch and basically a sign that the grid can not deal with the load.

[Monkeh]

I'm just saying the present lack of overnight charging is not the huge, impenetrable roadblock that people try to make it out to be.

It is for those who do not have it. The difference between 'now' and 'some indeterminate time in the future with no concrete plans' seems lost on you.

This is such a trivial problem to overcome.

I look forward to your detailed plans to resolving this issue for the majority of the affected population base. It's clearly simple, you should have those sorted by next week.

[2N3055]

You might want to ease up on calling things idiotic, while ignoring data you don't like...

Generation IS a problem. But not the biggest one. Grid needs to be taken to the streets. And grid is NOT specified by kWh, but by peak power... THAT is the problem.

No - sorry if I offended you, but the generation argument is parroted all the time by anti-EV zealots.  I'm not saying you are one, but I've heard it so many times, and it just doesn't make sense.  So it needs to die as an argument.

As for local grid upgrades, sure.  Loads of people charging 7kW at night would need to be accounted for, so we will probably see the upgrades being done there.  At the 11kV (local medium voltage distribution) there is almost certainly enough capacity.

It will depend especially on the distribution of cars and charging times ... For instance the average driver does like 20 miles per day so they only need 1hr of charging at 7kW for most cars.  With some delayed start, that could be charged almost any time between midnight and 6am, no capacity issue even if everyone does that (oven & electric hobs at 3-4kW at 6pm is not an issue already.)  But if people are charging up before summer holidays to go on a long road trip, and nearly every house is pulling 7kW... possible issue. Or if everyone on that street has a really long commute...e.g. a popular commuter town... then the average may not hold out so well.
 
One thing I've learned recently is there's a serious lack of monitoring at the secondary side of most of the UK's LV distribution - the DNOs (local network operators) often only know there's a capacity issue when fuses blow or transformers show excess wear upon periodic inspection.  That will probably change.  Fortunately one benefit of smart metering, I suppose, is that this can be monitored on a street-by-street level so it will be possible to figure out what needs to be done and where.

No offense was taken, I just wanted to make sure we don't float off in wrong direction.
And that is not argument from anti EV zealots, and for sure I'm not one. I cannot wait to have vehicle with electric motor group. But not until it is actually practical where I live. What I wrote is actual argument by some people I know in electro-distribution network here where I live. Not only it cannot die, it is primary problem for widespread adoption of BEV, next to BEV being more expensive than cheapest ICE cars.
Let me explain. First it is an old city where center was made in Austrian-Hungarian empire, centuries ago. Also, it was once part of Italy. So city and suburbs are looking like those crammed, cramped Italian cities you see in the movies...  They have huge problems keeping electrical grid running as it is.  There are no enough cables, there is no place for additional transformer stations locally (on the streets) and no bulk capacity to the city. All of that needs to be solved.

As for when people are charging, you can see the pattern by looking at parking patterns.  Pretty much, it will be happening overnight. All of them at the same time.
When they are home from the office, and all other activities. 7 kW is not enough power though, you need at least 16kW to charge it in reasonable time. Average of 50km is not important again, but a peak drive.. If I have to go Rijeka-Zagreb two days in a row (something very common here) I need to charge for 2 X 360-380 km in two days. And that has to be range, about 400km on a charge.

[Cerebus]

Even L2 charging isn't free or anywhere near free once you price in the wiring to it.  Streetside charging, even if only outlets, is a pretty big capital outlay.  I'm not sure there is enough copper available.

LOL.  Ok, if you say so.

You clearly have no idea about infrastructure costs. We're talking about places where you need to dig to install new electricity connections, none of that third world pig on a pole stuff.

The average cost of a new supply connection from existing street cables to a dwelling in the UK is £1790, most of that cost is digging in metalled roads and making good. There are 52 roadside parking spaces down my typical residential London street. That's a minimum of 26 type 2 charging points, at a minimum of £1000 a pop for the supply, £1000 a pop for a twin socket charging pillar, so ~£50,000 plus for one street.

If you include all the streets that London Licensed Taxi drivers are required to learn there are over 30,000. That's only the streets within six miles of Charing Cross. London is about 30 miles across, give or take. Which leads to a crude estimate of 180,000 streets. There's 9200 miles of roads in London (not an estimate). So that's on the order of £9 billion, just for London. Over £1000 for each man, woman and child that lives in London. The current property taxes for London total about £5 billion a year.

[2N3055]

I'm just saying the present lack of overnight charging is not the huge, impenetrable roadblock that people try to make it out to be.

It is for those who do not have it. The difference between 'now' and 'some indeterminate time in the future with no concrete plans' seems lost on you.

Exactly. It is primary and absolutely "impenetrable" block for me to buy BEV. I cannot have it fuelled (charged) so it will not drive me anywhere. And that holds true for ALL the people (several hundreds of them) living on my street. What am I saying, all of the 5000-10000 people living in this part of town have no chargers available. Only people I know here that have BEVs have private houses with garages ad driveways where they can charge at home, and not a single one have BEV as only vehicle.

[gnuarm]

Indeed.  Some 50% of UK households do in fact have driveways so those are the 'easy pickings' for installing charging.

The other half will need a solution, and it's definitely harder to solve.   But in the meantime, what's holding that the first half back?  How can we make EVs more attractive for those guys?

By having them for sale, to start.  I don't know about the UK, but it's hard to buy a BEV in the US because they've all been sold.  Some models have a 1 year waiting list.  Automakers are ramping up literally as fast as they can. 

Hmmm... I wonder if BEVs will ever catch on?

Less than 1% of the 250 million cars, SUVs and light-duty trucks on the road in the United States are electric.
Percentage of BEV in sales of new cars is irrelevant.

https://graphics.reuters.com/AUTOS-ELECTRIC/USA/mopanyqxwva/

World figures are somewhere better, somewhere worse..

It is easy to talk about infrastructure when 1% of cars on road are BEV.
It is easy to say they will scale electricity production, high voltage distribution networks, millions of local transformer stations, hundreds of millions of chargers etc..etc... But making current BEV electricity infrastructure 50-100x larger than now is colossal undertaking...
Making 50-100x more batteries for BEV than now???

Wow!  I don't know if you are uninformed or choosing to be in denial.  How much do you believe electrical production capacity will need to be increased?  Not talking about production, but capacity.  How many electrical generating plants will be built to supply BEVs by 2040 when nearly all cars on the road are BEVs?

Yes, we will need to build an EVSE for every BEV sold.  Let's see...  comparing the issue of building a quarter billion BEVs, vs building a quarter billion EVSE...  Yeah, I guess the EVSE are going to be the road block.  Clearly impossible. 

I mean, wow!  There's no way we could go from none to everyone having one of something in 30 years!  Wait, what am I typing this on? 

[2N3055]

Indeed.  Some 50% of UK households do in fact have driveways so those are the 'easy pickings' for installing charging.

The other half will need a solution, and it's definitely harder to solve.   But in the meantime, what's holding that the first half back?  How can we make EVs more attractive for those guys?

By having them for sale, to start.  I don't know about the UK, but it's hard to buy a BEV in the US because they've all been sold.  Some models have a 1 year waiting list.  Automakers are ramping up literally as fast as they can. 

Hmmm... I wonder if BEVs will ever catch on?

Less than 1% of the 250 million cars, SUVs and light-duty trucks on the road in the United States are electric.
Percentage of BEV in sales of new cars is irrelevant.

https://graphics.reuters.com/AUTOS-ELECTRIC/USA/mopanyqxwva/

World figures are somewhere better, somewhere worse..

It is easy to talk about infrastructure when 1% of cars on road are BEV.
It is easy to say they will scale electricity production, high voltage distribution networks, millions of local transformer stations, hundreds of millions of chargers etc..etc... But making current BEV electricity infrastructure 50-100x larger than now is colossal undertaking...
Making 50-100x more batteries for BEV than now???

Wow!  I don't know if you are uninformed or choosing to be in denial.  How much do you believe electrical production capacity will need to be increased?  Not talking about production, but capacity.  How many electrical generating plants will be built to supply BEVs by 2040 when nearly all cars on the road are BEVs?

Yes, we will need to build an EVSE for every BEV sold.  Let's see...  comparing the issue of building a quarter billion BEVs, vs building a quarter billion EVSE...  Yeah, I guess the EVSE are going to be the road block.  Clearly impossible. 

I mean, wow!  There's no way we could go from none to everyone having one of something in 30 years!  Wait, what am I typing this on?

Oh I see, so it is equal challenge to providing every household with a stationary 3kg box costing 500USD that needs 50W of power from standard (already there) outlet to function. You literally could not have found worse comparison.
Yes, I'm in denial and uninformed..

Please read the article..

[Miyuki]

No one says 100% BEV by tomorrow.  It will transition over the next 15-20 years.  There will still be ICE on the road in 2040.

The power generation argument is idiotic.  VW e-Golf is 4 miles per kWh... average let's say of 12,000 miles per year... So we need an extra 3,000kWh per car.

UK has 30 million cars - so extra generation of 90TWh.  Country generated 323TWh last year.

So yes... It is a lot... But also it is not that much - about 25% of total generation.  It seems completely feasible over the course of 20 years that generation could increase by 25%.  It will, after all, need to increase as gas heating is phased out.    The beauty of EVs is they can charge any time they are parked up, so they are great for soaking up excess renewables.

There will be some offset by this:
"it takes around 2 to 3kWh of electricity and 2 to 3kWh of heat energy (DOE figures) to produce a gallon of gas"
If the numbers are correct then it is a significant portion of the electricity needed for EVs when switched from ICEs

Grid storage is not likely to be lithium based going forward.  Autos and other "mobile" devices have a specific need for high energy density, both by volume and by weight.  Grid storage does not.  Other battery technologies will dominate that market. 

Currently vanadium flow batteries are looking very good for stationary storage.  I just read something about a very large installation that is going in.  I believe it was in an article about how the technology was developed with US funds, and somehow ended up in a Chinese factory.  It seems that is being corrected with the license being pulled.

I think grid storage even being a battery is unlikely.

Convert it into hydrogen and store that at STP in natural gas caverns, then pull that hydrogen through a few "fool-cells" to make electricity.

Here's the big reason that is not a good idea, battery storage is between 80% and 90% efficient.  You can't get anywhere near that with hydrogen.  If your goal is to waste energy using expensive processes, then hydrogen is ideal. 

Or, convert that hydrogen into natural gas using Fischer-Tropsch, or ammonia using the Haber process, and then combust as necessary (carbon-neutral fuel, assuming the natural gas leakage is kept low enough.)

Now you are doubling down on bad ideas.  You need to keep in mind the goal of using renewable energy.  It is to reduce and ultimately eliminate pollution, mostly the carbon emissions of fossil fuels.  The processes you list above start with fossil fuels as feedstocks.  You could substitute synthetic fuel or biomass derived fuels, but the cost would be quite prohibitive.

Most countries that use natural gas have huge salt or geological caverns underground suitable for storing whole seasons worth of gas and it's typically at a low pressure.  Reuse what we have.

Where do you get the natural gas that doesn't make this a huge polluter? 

Small battery-packs will handle the hour-by-hour load management but I doubt they will ever do much more than that - e.g. for the UK you'd need a 960GWh battery for 1 day's electricity (assuming demand stays as is) - that's roughly enough to build 13 million Tesla Model 3's - and you'll need more than one day worth of storage if the grid is fully renewable.

It would be a very serious drought that left wind farms and solar farms with zero output.  Still, they will be producing 13 million BEVs for the USA alone by 2029.  I don't see why this makes it unreasonable to build vanadium flow batteries.  Remember that the lithium ion battery is chosen for mobile applications because of the high specific energy (energy per weight).  Stationary applications don't care about that and will be built at a far lower cost per kWh than lithium ion cells.  Read up about it.  If you want to invest money in battery technology, vandium flow batteries are going to be a bigger wave than lithium ion because of the huge demand from buffering intermittent energy sources. 

Vanadium flow batteries are around for at least a decade yet is anywhere any working installation?
Hydrogen storage might a necessity in European conditions
Because you need to withstand a winter when you have minuscule solar power and wind can stop blowing for weeks (it happens quite commonly)
So to be able to have fossils as a backup for the worst case you need about 1 week of storage (for peak draw power as it happens in the same time)
And to be 100% renewable + nuclear it will have to be at least one whole month worth of energy
There is no way around it. Sahara solar farm is not a realistic approach as it is not a stable region. And you won't be able to transfer energy across Europe anyway.
So some huge chemical storage is a must.
In the US it can be significantly different.