Could it be controlled? How would the grid know that the 3.5Kw load at your house at 6pm was charging an EV and not heating water?

This is where the smart grid comes in. Priced electricity according to demand. You want your kettle boiled when you want a cup of tea, you wouldn’t really care if the electricity to boil it was going to be more expensive than at 1 in the morning.

But plenty of other stuff, perfect example being you want you car charged for 7am tomorrow, than can be done via a plug that will get it done at the lowest cost.

Edit: bit slow!

Likewise, who says you have to own the batteries?

I think you don’t? Certainly for some manufacturers, they represent more than 50% of the cost of the vehicle and remain the property of the mfr/leasing subsidiary.

Will be interesting to work out how charging of cars is going to work for households that have to park nose to tail on the street in the general vicinity of their house. It’s all very well in nice middle class suburban houses with cars parked on drives or in garages but are councils going to dig up every dwelling street in the land and lay provision for hundreds of cars to charge simultaneously per street. I guess they will have to. And some sort of clever smart charging payment where you can charge from any available point rather the one on your own house.

Come to think of it – how does it work at the moment? If you bought a leaf and lived on that street how would you charge at night if you can’t guarantee the space outside your house is free(assuming there was a charge point outside your house)?

Timed/scheduled chargers would sort that issue in a heartbeat.

Well they haven’t solved the current evening peak which could be smoothed by timed water heating, washing machines, tumble driers etc. Might take more than a heartbeat.

In any case National Grid think most people who don’t have off street parking will charge their cars during the day away from home. Maybe stopping on the way back from work. So timed charging will have zero effect on that.

So why the nationwide ban? Ban ICE cars from city centres.

Its not a ban, diesels will be long gone by 2040 anyway. Its a red herring to distract people from the lack of government action to reduce air pollution.

Its working because we are obsessed by cars electric or oil burners.

It’s not the technology that will hold things back, it’s human nature. The same with smart cars. People like owning their own car. Sharing or rent-on-demand isn’t going to happen for a long time.
People like having a car that can go for 100’s of miles, even if they only do that once a year. The next time we replace my wife’s car, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t electric (because all of her journeys are easily do-able with electric). Mine, I’m not sure.

Well they haven’t solved the current evening peak which could be smoothed by timed water heating, washing machines, tumble driers etc. Might take more than a heartbeat.

But all of those things are on existing infrastructure, if all domestic EV charges were time/schedule enabled from the outset you’re already a step ahead, again don’t get stuck in the stuff we already do badly, solutions to do it right are there, it’s about how we make sure we do it right.

In any case National Grid think most people who don’t have off street parking will charge their cars during the day away from home. Maybe stopping on the way back from work. So timed charging will have zero effect on that.

Not being able to charge at home due to lack of drive/garage is a big issue to overcome, it’s certainly one for me in my house, it’s more an issue of physical space/delivery than energy supply though, again we need to think cleverer… who says charging stations have to run off grid electricity all the time? perhaps they could be a combo of grid, and cache-battery, you stopping to charge your car on the way home or at work could in fact be charging from a cache-battery warehouse which was charged off-peak.

Replacing all the cars with electric tomorrow wouldn’t work, we all know that, but that’s why we need to look at how to enable changes over the long term, which means we have time to address the problems and work out solutions.

There are problems and hurdles to overcome, nobody is denying that, but there are also solutions, even if we haven’t found them all yet, and “it might be hard” isn’t a reason not to try, just as “it won’t be perfect” isn’t a reason not to aim for better.

Will be interesting to work out how charging of cars is going to work for households that have to park nose to tail on the street in the general vicinity of their house. It’s all very well in nice middle class suburban houses with cars parked on drives or in garages but are councils going to dig up every dwelling street in the land and lay provision for hundreds of cars to charge simultaneously per street. I guess they will have to. And some sort of clever smart charging payment where you can charge from any available point rather the one on your own house.

This ^^^

We’re not talking about commercial vehicles though are we?

No but being as there are no limits on what you can drive S a non commercial driver taking the commercial limits is a starting point for how long is reasonable to drive for without a break.

Smart grids are essential for the adoption of electric cars, but there’s nothing new to invent, it just needs rolling out. Ubitricity produce a car charging lamppost, relying in part on the energy savings from brighter, more efficient bulbs. Plug your car in to any free lamppost when you get home, it will charge or discharge as required until it’s at the level you need it the next morning; they can either all charge slowly, or take turns, from either the grid or from batteries in your house or the local substation that recharge slowly whilst demand is low. All the cars could briefly power everyone’s kettles when eastenders finishes and demand goes extra high. The full 41kWh of a 2017 Zoe will power our house for over a week; even a mostly empty car can do an awful lot of load balancing.

Maybe local grids will need upgrading in places, but there’s plenty of time and stuff like that gets maintained and replaced periodically anyway so there’s no rush.

This is what smart meters will play a bit part in. The time-of-use tariffs like Greener Energy’s Tide are one way of levelling demand, so you can charge your car at full rate at 6pm if you must, you’ll just pay through the nose for it. Integrated appliances that run when demand is lower and electricity is cheaper is another.

This ^^^

It is an issue at the moment without infrastructure, but right now I cant fill my car with petrol at home either, I have to go to a place where it is dispensed. Being that you can dispense electricity in many many more places than petrol I think there might be ways around this long term 😉

Especially when you take into account a Tesla SuperCharger can give you ~170miles of range in ~30 mins, and thats right now with current tech, so if you could get ~80 miles of range in 15 mins at work/shops/charging station it’s a viable possibility.

If charging times and range can be improved as well then it becomes less and less of an issue as time goes by and infrastructure improves.

No but being as there are no limits on what you can drive S a non commercial driver taking the commercial limits is a starting point for how long is reasonable to drive for without a break.

Yes, but we weren’t talking about commercial vehicles, which could conceivably stay FF powered until a viable alternative is in place, same for ‘long trip’ cars if it is a regular requirement. Most private journeys involve more stops or shorter distances by their nature anyway. There is an argument that Average Joe should have a lower limit anyway as he’s both not used to it, and not adapted to it, nor trained for it.

I also happen to think that the current commercial limits are too high. 4.5 hours of solid concentration on any task is asking a lot, especially when you consider that the result of getting it wrong can be so disastrous. But then I’m not in charge of the rules 😉

Haven’t read all of the previous posts on this thread, but here is some first hand experience of the current EV car ownership and usage.

Had a Nissan Leaf since December 2016,24kwh version.
Grant for a 7kwh charger funded by Nissan and I believe the government to help promote ownership.

Most of our journeys are less than 5 miles, rarely use a rapid charger except for longer journeys.
Real life range is about 80 miles, bigger battery cars and improvements in battery efficiencies will expand the range in the near future.

I realise that some people will have difficulties in adapting to EV cars, as off street parking is pretty much essential at the moment if you own EV.

There will be the haters, but the technology and infrastructure will improve and develop , even boosting the economy in terms of new technology infrastructure business.

Storage batteries will become a very big thing to cope with the increased demand for electricity, and the demise of the fossil fuels.

Air quality will improve in cities and densely populated areas.

People will have to look out for cars, as they are so quiet pedestrians and cyclists are not tuned in to listen for this type of traffic.

We are lucky, but the type of household I describe will become increasingly more common.

Solar panels on the roof, EV car, and a storage battery to store the excess energy made from the solar panels to charge the car and home.

It will be a big change, but I remember when all the houses had a fireplace, coal bunker and coal deliveries. Very rare now. Smog in towns and cities.

its changing, but probably at least a decade too late.

Could you simply not commute?

Ah, that chestnut. In theory, yes, but for a range of reasons that would take this thread off topic, I’m choosing to commute at the moment. It’s not forever.

People will have to look out for cars, as they are so quiet pedestrians and cyclists are not tuned in to listen for this type of traffic

Zoé makes a cute sci-fi noise below 30kmh and above that the tyre noise is enough. I borrowed a 106 years ago that surprised people.

Grant for a 7kwh charger funded by Nissan and I believe the government to help promote ownership.

In France the grant only covers a 14A (3KW) charge point. You pay the extra if you want a 7KW.

Ubitricity produce a car charging lamppost. Plug your car in to any free lamppost when you get home, it will charge or discharge as required until it’s at the level you need it the next morning

The problem is, look at that stock photo of on-street parking above, there are two lampposts and between 30 and 40 cars.

I like electric cars, I’ve driven a Leaf a few times lately and was really pleasantly surprised by it, but ‘charging lampposts’ don’t do much to address the charging problem.

But the fundamental problems with this are:
1. It’s so far away that it lets government get away with doing nothing of any substance now.
2. It was probably going to happen anyway, like someone else said, it would be like announcing in 1990 that typewriters would not be for sale after 2013.
3. We still don’t seem to be considering that maybe driving everywhere isn’t the answer. Congestion isn’t solved (and is possibly made worse, due to ‘guilt free’ driving) by electric cars. Electric cars aren’t much quieter at ~25mph+ than ICE cars. Electric cars are not inherently safer than ICE cars, certainly not to pedestrians and cyclists. A lot of air pollution hasn’t come out of an exhaust, it comes from brake pads, tyres and the road itself being ground up and spat into the air. Electric cars do nothing to stop the impact of sedentary lifestyles on the NHS. Our cars are killing us, and electric cars will carry on killing us, just in slightly smaller numbers.

£250m being spent on low emission stuff across the entire country is only twice what was recently spent near me ‘improving traffic flow’ (i.e. making journeys by motor vehicles more convenient) on a single junction. They’ve moved the queues up to the next junction along, so now they’re going to spend the same again a mile up the road. Then they’ll have to do it all again, and again and again and again.

Maybe we need to look at all those short journeys and build infrastructure that makes doing them by bike safe and convenient. It has the highest cost/benefit ratio of any transport infrastructure. We gain from health benefits of more activity, from cleaner air, from quieter streets, from less congestion. It’s all good, basically, but we won’t do it because we (as a country) love cars and cyclists are lycra-wearing weirdos.

Ah, that chestnut. In theory, yes, but for a range of reasons that would take this thread off topic, I’m choosing to commute at the moment.

I’m not sure it is off-topic tbh. If we removed the millions of people who are driving about the country twice a day to sit infront of a computer at someone else’s desk instead of their own, it would have a massive impact on transport infrastructure. And quite possibly much easier to implement than millions of charging stations. Let’s face it, travelling when you don’t absolutely need to is a waste of energy whether it’s electricty or petrol.

I’d have thought that learing how to effectively work remotely for a large section of the population would be the easiest and cheapest thing to do.

By 2040 the majority of cars will be autonomous.

Charging outside your house becomes a non issue. The car drives itself to the charge – o – mat down the road and waits there until its summoned.

It can do the same when you are working – top itself up while you are at work then pick you up from your place of work.

This is assuming we still “own” cars rather then just summon them as an when we need them

Given the resistance being shown to EV’s you have to wonder how ICE cars became so popular given the lack of infrastructure when they started to make it past the pretty wealthy. If the market for EV’s really kicks of the technology will move faster and the infrastructure will be built.
I’d suggest there will be a number of ICE manufacturers a tad nervous today.

The problem is, look at that stock photo of on-street parking above, there are two lampposts and between 30 and 40 cars.

None of them can get petrol form the lamp post either….if charging points are numerous enough, and battery capacity sufficient why would they have to be charged on that street?

Most of them will go to a place of work and spend the whole day sat in a parking space for 8 hours where they can be charging.

Those that don’t will likely end up at another charger at some point during the day whether that be a site visit or at the shops or a normal car park, charge there while you’re busy.

And that still leaves the possibility of charging at a ‘petrol station’ style forecourt if needed.

It a mindset change and routine/behaviour change that’s required, it’s not even necessarily a difficult change, it might just be different.

Think about when cars first appeared, there were no fuelling stations, you had to have a supply at home (as well as a toolbox and an your own engineer!), and then as things progressed fuelling stations sprang up, still few and far between and needed planning for you journey. Then more and more widespread as ICE vehicles became more mainstream the infrastructure grew with them, same thing can happen here, but with the added bonus that the ‘fuel’ can be dispensed literally anywhere, it should/could be easier than a petrol/diesel based fuel delivery infrastructure in the long run.

None of them can get petrol form the lamp post either….if charging points are numerous enough, and battery capacity sufficient why would they have to be charged on that street?

Most of them will go to a place of work and spend the whole day sat in a parking space for 8 hours where they can be charging.

Those that don’t will likely end up at another charger at some point during the day whether that be a site visit or at the shops or a normal car park, charge there while you’re busy.

And that still leaves the possibility of charging at a ‘petrol station’ style forecourt if needed.

It a mindset change and routine/behaviour change that’s required, it’s not even necessarily a difficult change, it might just be different.

Think about when cars first appeared, there were no fuelling stations, you had to have a supply at home (as well as a toolbox and an your own engineer!), and then as things progressed fuelling stations sprang up, still few and far between and needed planning for you journey. Then more and more widespread as ICE vehicles became more mainstream the infrastructure grew with them, same thing can happen here, but with the added bonus that the ‘fuel’ can be dispensed literally anywhere, it should/could be easier than a petrol/diesel based fuel delivery infrastructure in the long run.

As I understand it these fast chargers that can top up your car in 30mins only refill to 80% capacity and also are not brilliant to the life of the battery – they prefer gentler charging. So in reality charging at the moment is something like 8hrs every 80 miles rather than 5mins every 400 so the ‘petrol from lamp posts’ analogy is not super accurate as the needs of the two are so dissimilar. Also from a national perspective you’ll want cars charging efficiently at at low peak times not inefficiently (fast charging is not particularly efficient) and all at going home time.

That is today’s technology however and with a couple of decades to tweak it I’m sure it will be so much better when we get there en masse.

Unfortunately the concept of slow charging overnight on spare capacity then falls down, so you’re back to trying to solve that problem. I’m not saying it’s a problem which can’t be solved, but there are no simple solutions, and that certainly isn’t one.

As for long trips – most of my long trips this year have been to campsites in remote places, the most recent was to a bunkhouse also in a remote area (with numerous other cars there, despite lots of lift sharing). I don’t think any of these trips would have been doable there and back without recharging, yet I didn’t stop for a rest on any of the journeys – and didn’t need to. Presumably such campsites need to lay on electricity supplies for charging?

I’m not sure it is off-topic tbh.

I meant it’s off-topic wrt the diesel/electric choice. Right now, if all other variables stayed the same except for my car turning electric overnight (at zero cost to me, obs) then I’d still be driving here tomorrow and the day after. My commuting choice is based on other factors.

I’m serious about getting a Tesla at some point though. I just can’t afford one yet.

Most of them will go to a place of work and spend the whole day sat in a parking space for 8 hours

Hmm. Most places I go to the car parks are full, and if you’re not there before 8am you have to go hunting around for some other side street or verge on which to park. If the office car park was the only place to charge your car it could get ugly.

I agree the problems need solving, but simple it aint.

Well I have to say there are a lot of good considered arguments on here today.

Nobody has yet resorted to calling anyone a Liberal Nut Job or Right Wing Tory Flounder.

Good effort, but I feel I’m in the wrong forum.

“I’m serious about getting a Tesla at some point though. I just can’t afford one yet.”

Me also, they seem a good car particularly the X. I do wonder if Tesla cars will actually make any money, the company seems to have been going long enough to start to turn a profit. There has been a charging point at Oxford services on the M40 for a number of years now. It seems to be getting increased use, according to my latest scientific survey (I count the cars parked there on monthly drive past).

@convert

The rapid chargers don’t do any harm to the battery, neither does charging to 100%.

There are taxi firms in London and other big cities with emission controls, they have Leafs with over 100,000 miles on them in a two to three year period.

They could only manage these sorts of mileages by using rapid chargers.

The normal charging will be fine,

so the ‘petrol from lamp posts’ analogy is not super accurate

nor was it supposed to be, it was supposed to highlight that we’re stuck in thinking about ‘how things are done now’ and applying that to future technology when it might not be appropriate. ie: the charge at work/shops/elsewhere ideas. I don’t fill my car up with diesel at home now, why should I need to fill it with electricity at home? The only reason EV users are doing that now is because charging infrastructure doesn’t exist (and peace of mind over range anxiety).

If the office car park was the only place to charge your car it could get ugly.

Good job nobody suggested it would be then 😉

Unfortunately the concept of slow charging overnight on spare capacity then falls down,

As above, think outside of current ideas, battery warehousing/caching for storage during off-peak and then re-delivery when needed is one idea. There may be a surplus overnight, that doesn’t mean the only time you can use it is overnight, if you have storage capacity it can be re-delivered when needed.

As for long trips – most of my long trips this year have been to campsites in remote places, the most recent was to a bunkhouse also in a remote area (with numerous other cars there, despite lots of lift sharing). I don’t think any of these trips would have been doable there and back without recharging, yet I didn’t stop for a rest on any of the journeys – and didn’t need to. Presumably such campsites need to lay on electricity supplies for charging?

Maybe it wouldn’t have been doable without re-charging, maybe in future it will be? or maybe the campsite will (or should) think about having a charging station on site in future, it’d certainly be easier than having a petrol station on site, again it’s about thinking how we could do things, not how badly we currently do things. The nice thing about electricity is it’s already everywhere, and the cost of charging points wouldn’t necessarily have the be foisted upon the campsite/shops/businesses etc.

None of it is going to be simple, but then neither is dealing with the existing ICE related issues of air quality, and diminishing resources (or increasing cost of extracting them).

Personally I think EVs are only one part of the solution, a general change in approach to transport is needed as well, along with energy gneration and consumption habits, but that’s another set of non-simple problems to think about 😀

Simple it ‘aint, worthwhile and necessary it is….

Well I have to say there are a lot of good considered arguments on here today.

Nobody has yet resorted to calling anyone a Liberal Nut Job or Right Wing Tory Flounder.

Nor have we got to Godwin’s law yet

As far as I know there is no such thing (yet) as a commercially available electric HGV or LGV?

Plenty of work seems to be going on in this area – see e.g. https://nikolamotor.com/. Plenty of electric vans and taxis running around too. I wouldn’t be surprised if commercial traffic went mostly electric before domestic.

(fast charging is not particularly efficient)

Actually the Zoe charges more efficiently at higher rates… the R90 ZE40 is 71% at 2.3kW but 91% at 43kW. (The rapid charge version, the Q90, is even worse at 59% at 2.3kW… this is why they don’t bother providing a 3-pin plug charger with a new car).

The whole point though is that there is no need for a campsite to have a petrol station on site – it’s the change to vehicles with a lower range and slower refuelling which starts requiring such things. As for electricity being everywhere, that’s a maybe – I’m sure all those campsites had it, but I’m not sure the infrastructure supplying electricity into the Ogwen valley is sufficient to cope with the number of cars just on the one campsite I was on (and there are also a couple of other campsites and a YHA there). I’ve also been to events where the organisors were using generators with over 100 cars parked on site. I’m also interested in who you think is going to pay for the cost of recharging points (and required infrastructure) in remote locations?

First point last, I’m not seeing orders of magnitudes differences in range in the next 23 years. I’m certainly not one to suggest automotive technology has advanced a huge amount in the last 23 year (my previous car was 19 years old, with technology remarkably similar to now), and I’m somewhat sceptical about the amount of advances in the next 23, even in the relatively immature field of electric cars. I note that examples of huge differences in the last 23 years earlier in the thread all involved relatively new and fast changing areas of technology – the car is over 100 years old.

on a side note….

I do wonder if Tesla cars will actually make any money

One of the interesting things about Musk’s current exploits (Tesla/SpaceX/Neuralink eetc.) is that the goal of the companies is not primarily to turn a profit, it’s to achieve an advance in technology adn capability in a particular sector*. That then drives a demand for that sector and grows the industry and the profit is a by-product of the success, not the success itself.

He doesn’t set out with the goal ‘how can I make a profit in sector X’, he starts with the goal ‘How can I make sector X a viable industry in order to achieve Y’

The goal of Tesla was not to make money from Electric cars, but to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel powered vehicles and thus improve air quality and move us away from a finite resource. The only way he could see that happening was to kick start decent EV development to try and stimulate the industry in a way the existing mainstream manufacturers weren’t going to.

Same with SpaceX, it’s all very well trying to create a company to produce re-useable launch vehicles and dramatically reduce the cost of space travel, but his reason for doing so is to allow us as species to branch out beyond this planet, SpaceX is the vehicle to acheive the goal, not the goal itself.

Obviously ultimately Tesla and SpaceX need to make money to grow but there’s a subtle but important difference in the reason they came to exist.

*The sector being an area that he thinks will bring significant benefit to us as a race, not him as a person/bank account.

@aracer, you make many valid points, but ultimately whats your solution, to stick with ICE?

Or to look at how we can make the alternatives* work because we have to? (or even just because it’s the right thing to do)

I’m also interested in who you think is going to pay for the cost of recharging points (and required infrastructure) in remote locations?

Many options to think about here, franchised stations, national private (or public) distribution company, the battery manufacturers, vehicle manufacturers, electricity/power companies. I’m not sure exactly what would be the best option but if there’s a commercially viable business model in there someone will make it happen.

If you look at Tesla they’re currently going it alone by putting their own chargers in, but a multi-company co-operation could vastly increase the reach, as could government mandate if they were serious about moving away from FF.

Hey, I don’t claim to have all the answers but I do honestly believe the answers are out there and and that FF are not a long-term solution, based on that belief, I’d rather we started looking into it and planning for it well in advance and with a designed rollout rather than a short-term panic in years to come.

*alternatives doesn’t have to mean EV, but it’s looking like the most viable option for the near to medium future. Any replacement for petrol or diesel is going to mean infrastructure upheaval, and being bound to petrol and diesel is not a good long-term strategy…even if you could do full-exhaust product capture to deal with the air pollution issue it’s still not a viable fuel source unless you can move to a renewable-fuel ICE.

Those are the two things you need to address.

1 – renewable – because it has to be
2 – non-polluting – because is should be

I’d be behind any alternative that can hit both of those, and I know the ‘leccy generation for EVs doesn’t fully hit point 1 or 2 yet, but it it’s easier to move central generation in the right direction, and EVs at least deal with 2 on a local level.

Where are those figures from? I’m not suggesting they’re wrong, but dubious about whether they’re comparing apples with apples – basic physics suggests that slow charging shouldn’t be less efficient, so I’m wondering where the losses are (and 91% efficiency seems incredibly high for fast charging).

From my understanding of the physics involved in charging batteries, fast charging shouldn’t be hugely less efficient if you do it right – not as efficient as slow charging, but the difference is one of the less important issues here.

No – I’m certainly in favour of such changes, probably far more than most people. But as an engineer (there I’ve said it) my hackles always rise at people suggesting they have solutions for things which are quite complex. Yes we do need to find solutions, but it will be far from straightforward, and my gut feeling (based partly on involvement in numerous long term engineering projects) is that 23 years seems an incredibly tight timescale to make the change. It’s an interesting discussion, but you need sceptics like me to make it an interesting discussion 😉

In reality there will likely be other changes before then which will drive things, though I’m not quite sure what there is to force future governments to stick to that timescale.

Given the resistance being shown to EV’s you have to wonder how ICE cars became so popular given the lack of infrastructure when they started to make it past the pretty wealthy.

Because ICE cars were faster than horses and carts. Even then local deliveries were still horse and cart in the 1930s some 40-50 yrs after the ICE car was invented. An early car could carry enough fuel for long journeys and didn’t depend on widespread filling stations.

The problem with current EVs is that they are much more expensive and than ICE car,don’t do anything an ICE car can’t, and have a shorter range.

I’m not sure early cars where more capable, practical or inexpensive than horse and carts.

but it will be far from straightforward

on that I’ll never disagree!

is that 23 years seems an incredibly tight timescale to make the change.

How much of that do you think is because we (as a society/species) are not trying hard enough? (not being facetious, genuine question by the way)

The problem with current EVs is that they are much more expensive

so was a car Vs horse, change still happened. Economy of scale and adoption will change that, even if it’s not EVs, but some other fuel, it’ll always be more expensive initially.

and than ICE car,don’t do anything an ICE car can’t

Au contraire! they do do something an ICE can’t, or rather they don’t do something bad that an ICE does, namely they don’t (locally) poison the air we breathe. Nor do they deplete a rather precious natural resource. (Yes lithium blah blah blah I know, but it CAN be recycled, it’s just hard and expensive at the moment, you can’t recycle your burnt petrol back into petrol)

and have a shorter range.

gap is closing, and as discussed numerous times, for the majority of trips this is a theoretical problem not a practical one. And like your horse and cart analogy, there’s nothing stopping ICE still being around for the fringe cases.

Personally I’m not a fan of either.

We tried incredibly hard on all sort of other engineering projects which took a long time. There are just such a huge number of problems which need to be solved here, and right now we don’t even know problem solving process for some of them! It’s a bit of a finger in the air feeling, but you have to appreciate the requirement to find solutions in far less than 23 years in order to allow time for implementation and roll out stages.

By the time they made it past the wealthy they were. irc makes a very good point – sure wider scale infrastructure might have been lacking, but there was still an advantage to ICE vehicles despite that in comparison to the alternative.

I note that ICE vehicles became widespread despite the continued sale of horses and carts.