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Originally Posted by Equilibrandt
This is the kind of conversation the world needs to be having; I've never actually thought about this. I'll admit I don't know much about crude oil refining; just that certain temps generate certain products but without a full top to bottom flow, a lot of the crude is wasted. We can't just make Jet Fuel and Diesel and not make Gasoline and all the other lubricatives.
In your example, the thing that scares me most is the downstream, like you mentioned. I don't see a single negative to every delivery truck being an EV; mail, packages, shelf-stocking, logistics. However, reserving oil-products/diesel for exclusively-heavy lifters would be horrendous: I'm trying to imagine how much it'd cost to excavate and prep land for a residential build if the larger machines were the main and only consumers of fuel. As if housing prices aren't high enough now! 
I think I disagree with the refinery/infrastructure POV, though. Plenty of previously-booming infrastructure and business has dried up; when's the last time you went into a vacuum repair store? (Obviously a low-brow example, but a just one.) How much longer will the car dealership model continue to be a smart real estate investment as more and more manufacturers move to partial online sale offerings? Growing pains are growing pains but the world's still spinning.
I think we all know how it's going to go. Promised, "hard" deadlines that get pushed further and further to the right every 5 years; but it's these looming, truthfully soft deadlines that drive innovation toward better battery technology, range improvements, EV tire technology, etc; one might argue that without a deadline (even a fake one), no one would push the envelope without huge financial benefits, which EVs are not, currently. |
The free market is the best force for creation of new and better products, not government mandates. That's how all this started, with CARB.