uncleiggy

Very good points, I knew about a few initiatives like the one you mentioned in Israel. I guess that the replaceable battery would be the smallest one, the one with less range, still expensive. A lot of regulations, controls and standards to keep only healthy battery packs in circulation, I know, I know, an utopia!

Another crazy option would be wireless charging spots at red lights, parking lots, supermarkets, etc...Maybe in 2051.

superswiss

The switch to EV is not gonna happen without massive tax payer payed incentive and the building of a huge charging infrastructure everywhere there is public or private parking. Norway is the leading example of this. They are and already have installed charging stations at almost every street parking spot in their cities, so you can charge the car wherever you park. Every second car sold there is an EV now. Most of their electricity is also produced by wind, solar and hydro, so it's clean. They give out massive incentives. Not only can you charge at every parking spot, you can also park for free in most cities if you have an EV and there are other massive incentives. All paid by the tax payer. But even so, their biggest challenge is still having enough charging stations. Winter range is also an issue and Norway is the perfect place to put that to test.

Here in the USA we are far away from making EVs really practical. They work for people who commute a lot and have a garage with a charger at home or charging available at work. Any type of road trip has to be planned around a very sparse charging infrastructure compared to the density of gas stations. Just as an example, I spent last weekend up north in rural NorCal. First of all it was a 200 mile trip to get there and then we stayed in small town and drove about 200 miles every day exploring the area. There were fun driving roads and my wife was on the lookout for fall colors. The town we stayed in had a couple of gas stations and there were other small towns around with a gas station. So no problem fueling up the car, but there were no charging stations anywhere. We would have been completely stranded in an EV. We stayed at an Airbnb studio with the car parked on the street. Only option would have been a long extension cord and charging it from a regular 110V outlet, which takes way too long to get enough of a charge.

Of course for times like this, one could rent an ICE car. Audi has Silvercar where you can rent a Q5, but last week Audi discontinued their Audi on Demand program here in San Francisco, which was a very interesting concept, because you could rent anything from an A3 to an R8. Now we can only rent A4s, Q5s and A5 Cabs through Silvercar. But in my case I have a car mostly for recreational purposes such as the road trip we did this weekend or going for fun drives on the weekends. The last thing I wanna do is having to plan those around charging stations or running out of battery in the middle of a remote canyon or rent a boring car. I do my part to helping the climate by not senselessly commuting 50+ miles every day to haul my butt to some central work campus and back at the end of the day. We would solve the climate problem if everyone were to cut their driving in half. Instant doubling of the current mpg and it would solve the traffic problem, too. It's time to invest into better transportation infrastructure for commuters that doesn't involve personal cars or drastically reduce commuting in the first place by heavily promoting telecommuting. Many jobs can be done remote. I've founded a software consulting company with three colleagues and we don't have a central office. Everybody works remote.

Redd

iggy-
They couldn't use smaller batteries for a swap. Consider, if your safe highway range with a "big" battery is 2-3 hours (using the electric heater in the winter, AC in the summer, whatever) and you put in a smaller battery...oh no, way too many more recharging stops, no matter how fast they are. Catch-22, the charge density has to come up, something has to make fewer recharging stops possible. Heck, I did NYC to western Chicago once in 12 hours, the first one consumed by repaving on the GWB. Made two fuel stops and IIRC two quick runs into the bushes in between. Now, twelve hours is a long day by most driving standards. Add a 12 hour recharge every 250 miles...and it becomes more of a 14-hour day, and makes that into an overnight trip with extra hotel and meal and vacation day lost.

A deal breaker.

Or, I suppose, a company like Gm or Ford or Toyota could say "If you buy an electric car from us, you can also schedule a FREE three day gasoline loaner car for your trips out of state, and a heavily discounted electric loaner car if you'd prefer at your destination." There is at least one solution--but it would require some massive gambling and commitment.

Wireless charging ain't never gonna happen. The bottom line is that there's no such thing. You can charge by magnetic induction, which requires pumping an extremely strong magnetic field, or uses a weak charge (like the Qi charging for phones that has never caught on because it is so slow) or you can do it by beaming high power radio waves. That's called a microwave oven. Stray kitten wanders under the car and oops, gets cooked by the charger. Someone is likely to get upset.

Nikola Tesla is the only man who ever figured out how to wirelessly power the world, and somehow, that knowledge has forever been lost before it could be deployed. Or so we're told.

spijun

This is thread for Q5 / SQ5 MKI (8R)

Here :
https://www.audiworld.com/forums/audi-e-tron-232/