Re: Will it.....
> Your spot on in all your points, it is only the "refuel/recharge time" that is last element to be resolved, and that is only an issue for long distance journeys.
There is at least one other element. Battery wear. An IC cars fuel tank will hold 60 litres, whether it is brand new, or 30 years old. With proper maintenance, an IC engine will provide more or less the same power output throughout its life. Meaning that a cars range is pretty fixed. If it can do 500 miles today, chances are in 10 years it can do 450-500 miles still.
An electric cars range is reported when new, however the battery packs wear out with every charge cycle. How long will a battery last before you can't do more than 30 miles on a charge? How much would it cost to replace the pack? Would it be more than the car is worth after 10 years?
The battery technology is the same as used in my phone. When it was new, it would last about 3 days on a charge. After a year and a half, it only lasts about 4-5 hours. This is a fully managed battery, with all kinds of energy saving and smart charging firmware.
If an electric car is similar in battery wear, then after 3-5 years the car becomes pretty useless unless a brand new battery pack is installed. Batteries are pretty expensive (I seem to remember somewhere that the Tesla battery is around £16,000 after government discounts and other green subsidies), so the car may well drop in value like a brick after buying new.
The energy cost in mining, refining, and building the lithium, then collecting it, reprocessing/recycling it will probably end up using more energy and causing more pollution than just sticking to some sort of chemical fuel (doesn't have to be fossil based).
Alternatively you just start treating cars as a consumable item than a long term investment, but scrapping and building new cars ever few years in a refresh cycle sounds like it would consume even more energy (and generate more pollution) than just doing it once and keeping the car for longer periods.
Another issue is that batteries don't do well with hot-cold cycles. Batteries self discharge faster in cold weather, so you will find your range is reduced based on the outside temperature. Also running heating will reduce your range, or running air-con. in an IC car heating will not reduce your range (it is essentially "free") and while aircon will reduce your range, it doesn't do it by much. An IC car will also not self discharge when unused.