The Economy

The batteries are getting better. And, of course, with almost any technology it's important to remember that the current version is the worst and most expensive version we'll ever have. We're still more or less on the first generation of electric vehicles, so hopefully those two issues will sort themselves out together and over time.
Of course, we're nowhere near to the point where they have yet, which is why it's damn foolish to think we can do a 100 percent switch in 10 years.

I'll also add two others to your list, that I think people are starting to wake up to:

3. The problem of overtaxing the electrical grid. We're almost at capacity now, and no one is building new power plants that we need. A lot of people pushing hard for electric vehicles seem to think that electricity is produced by magical fairies living in their walls. The kind of capacity we'll need to totally convert our entire transportation grid to electric vehicles is off the charts.
Throw in that a number of policies are also not just seeking to scale back use of all fossil fuels, but choke them off altogether to spur this transition — a number of cities are banning the use of natural gas in new homes, in addition to the stuff we see restricting oil and gas development — and if you think about this for more than two minutes you'll have serious practical questions that haven't been answered yet.

4. Infrastructure. It still takes some advance route planning to go any long distances in an electric car. Public charging stations are still rather inefficient or often broken. Even for-profit charging stations (Tesla being a notable exception) are gaining a reputation for being unreliable.
You can charge from home, but to do it with any kind of speed requires an electrical upgrade to your house that costs several thousand dollars on top of the price of the car. And that's if you have a standalone house with a garage or carport. If you live in an apartment, rent a house, or live in a city where you park on the street it's not something you can easily do, if you can do it at all.

 

America isn't a very bike friendly place. E- or otherwise.

So E-bikes make some sense in certain cities and suburbs. And E-bikes make some sense for young, single people.

As do regular bikes. Or motorcylces, or scooters.

And like regular bikes, E-bikes aren't great in the winter.

Nor is an E-bike gonna help you get 14 bags of groceries and three kids home from a WalMart SuperCenter that's 26 miles away from your house, which is the way a lot of us have chosen to live.

 

We have electric heat and our bill in the winter topped $700 one month. Our complex has very casually mentioned solar. Put panels on every damn roof, I don't care.

 

We also have electric heat. I’m just lucky my wife and son are fellow polar bears who are fine with the house being 63.

 

I've never really understood direct electric heating in temperate climates. In LA or Houston or Atlanta, with relatively few heating days a year? Sure.

Everywhere else, an electric heat pump is a pretty good hot summer / cold winter alternative to direct electric heating.

 

Even better? Our heat coils are in the ceiling. Absolute geniuses built this thing back in 1964.

 

Convection giveth and convection taketh away.

We live on the 18th floor. Steam heat masonry building with 'modern' (1955) low profile radiators. No thermostat.

Been here more than a decade. We've never opened any valve to get heat.

We have often opened the windows midwinter to let it escape.

The neighbors, an older couple, sometimes run their air conditioner to keep things under 90 in February.

 

This was built in the early 1980s, when there might’ve been a couple hundred solar panels in the U.S. and nuclear had more champions. I suppose they were hoping for basically free electric in the near term. A couple of our neighbors have switched to oil, but that isn’t worth the expense for the relatively small savings IMO. With recent sales we’re probably coming into the third generation of owners, with a handful of originals holding out. It was one of the early buyers who’s the HOA president who broached the topic, so maybe we’re closer than I think.

 

I kind of wonder if nuclear will ever again regain popular support in the U.S. Solar, wind and hydro are probably the "best" ways to provide power, with the caveat that they probably can't fully supply our needs at their current yields. Once you get past them, nuclear is better than the others, but the risk of a meltdown is way spookier than just the continual erosion of the atmosphere. With all power generation though, there is a whole lot of NIMBY shit going on that's going to make things difficult in the next 20 years, judging from how people have fought against wind turbines.

 

I heard Ernest Moniz (energy secretary for Obama) say that he thinks we’re on a breakthrough with fusion, which apparently would create much less nuclear waste.