Some of this has to do with CA ZEV mandates, the federal tax credit, and - of course - consumer demand. I believe that "within a decade" is a bit optimistic for demand to reach majority status - the production cost issue is a tough nut to crack and the demand side is still limited.
The high production cost of EVs is largely due to lack of economy of scale. If we were to build EVs in similar numbers as gas cars, they would actually cost less because they're far less complex. I think what we need to jump start the process is some major huge fleet going all electric and/or some local or state legislation which mandates a phase-in of ZEVs. I see a parallel here to CRTs and LCDs. I still recall people saying on message boards a decade ago that LCDs were never going to capture even half the market, and CRTs would still be with us in large numbers in 25 years. Well, it's ten years later and you can't even give away CRTs. I suspect the situation will be much the same with gas cars in a decade. People might not ditch their relatively new gas cars for electrics, but anyone in the market for a new vehicle probably won't be looking at anything other than electrics. If I had a need to drive even now I wouldn't be looking at anything other than electrics. The idea of "refueling" in the driveway is just too nice to ignore, not to mention gas prices are only going one way in the long term.
There are other problems with rapid uptake, such as the lack of charging for those without private garages and a similar lack of charging at work where their vehicle will spend many hours a day. Given the immense expense that Tesla goes through to make >200 mile range vehicles, it may be some time until BEV's hit something close to "range-cost parity" with ICE vehicles. An alternative would be the strong-parallel hybrid concept ala the Volt, but that's another cost problem that's not easy to solve.
One concept which shows a lot of promise is on-the-fly inductive charging. It's being tried for Formula E racing. If it works out, it may well by the key factor making electric vehicles mainstream.
I suspect that without supermajority consensus and a graceful rollout period, such regulation would be the stuff of explosive litigation and recall elections.
I have news for you. In NYC there is already a supermajority who doesn't drive or own a car. They would vote to ban cars altogether from city limits if a referendum ever came up. A ZEV mandate would easily pass in NYC. In the end a big factor in favor of ZEV mandates will be studies which show roughly ten times as many people die each year from the effects of vehicle pollution as from collisions. In the US that's about 300,000 a year. Worldwide it's some tens of millions. Health care costs are a growing concern. Anything which can be done to slow the growth of these costs is likely to be passed into law eventually, including ZEV mandates.
Indeed. Long-haul overland, air, and sea transportation looks to be the domain of liquid fuels for some time - and petroleum is the cheapest liquid fuel source by far. This is to say nothing for its use as a feedstock for organic chemistry, fertilizer, etc.
With $Trillions invested in the infrastructure for liquid fuels, there will be incentive to keep using them so long as supply is there at a reasonable price. Short of the railroads and a slice of the personal auto sector, it's difficult to envision electrification of other forms of transport.
I'm not seeing any alternative to liquid fuels for air transport, but there are several quite viable electrified alternatives to air travel. High-speed rail is time competitive with air on trips up to about 300 to 500 miles. Maglev in vacuum tubes has the potential to beat air over any distance although it will be at least a generation before a significant maglev system can be built.
Large ocean going vessels can be powered by wind if transit time isn't terribly important (i.e. bulk cargo), or nuclear power if it is. Railroads can obviously be electrified. In the final analysis most of our transportation system can be electrified within 25 years or so if we put our mind to it. The key factor here is the cost of liquid fuels. At current prices there is already significant incentive to move away from them. Price volatility is another reason. I don't have a crystal ball but I suspect in the short to medium term natural gas will increasingly take the place of petroleum or coal while electricity is being slowly phased in. We're already seeing that with power generation in the US. Large ships might be the next things to run on natural gas. Long term we're probably looking at maglev, railways, and motor vehicles all powered by electricity generated from a variety of sources, with fission/fusion/renewables generating an ever larger percentage of the grid power.
