[dataway]

One thing to bear in mind is that there are two camps when it comes to EVs. The "pollution" camp, and the "All fossil fuel use is bad" camp.

The first camp has good intentions, but ignores electric source pollution and the fact that the sum total of the effect on the environment is based on how the power is generated, transported and distributed. They also ignore the tremendous gains made in efficiency and improvement of the ICE.

The second camp is the radical/political camp which has an un-reasoned, emotional approach that fanatically abhors all things fossil. There is no conversation with them, their position is not based on reason or critical thought.

The anti-fossil camp cares naught about vintage cars, or the minuscule amount they are driven, the less fortunate that have to drive older cars, or any other reasoned argument you can provide.

The pollution camp is in a hurry. They want change immediately and discount the ever decreasing amount of pollution in our air due to improvements in ICE design. Unfortunately their influence is probably reducing the amount of effort going into the continued improvement of the ICE by scaring manufacturers into diverting disproportionate resources into EVs. Manufacturers are not investing in EV research because they care about environmental issues, they are doing so in the expectation of legislation requiring these changes. They will invest in whichever way they think the legislative wind is blowing regardless if the science makes any sense. They are not in the business of educating people, but are there to sell cars in whatever form the government mandates.

We are ending up with a lopsided development scenario ... fossil fuel cars will be around for several more decades, they will be the majority of vehicles for probably the next two decades, but research dollars are being diverted prematurely to an auto segment that is in part arising to help solve problems with fossil fuel autos that might be much less of a problem in the future if development continued apace on the ICE.

In other words we are trying very hard to solve a problem that might not be nearly as drastic if we didn't divert so many resources to solving it instead of continuing to improve existing technology. Sure there will be a large place for EVs, but will there be so large a place in 20 years that we can sacrifice ICE development in the meantime?