I think that the technical limitations of EVs (range, towing, etc.) are things that will not be overcome. I don't want to say it will be easy, but it will be a

I think that the technical limitations of EVs (range, towing, etc.) are things that will not be overcome. I don't want to say it will be easy, but it will be a matter of a motivated company (or companies) applying resources to to solve a problem. The far more wishful thinking part of the article is the idea of a retreat from ownership and on-demand vehicle usage. I'm sure it will be an option. Avis and Hertz will build fleets of summonable cars that you pay in a monthly fee and it picks you up and drops you off. That sounds great as a city dweller, but there are lots of parts of the country where that simply isn't tenable. I know of hundreds of towns in my state that have a population of less than 500 and are at least a hour drive from a town with more than 5000 people. No car company can fix that problem, and even if they create a great incentive to move to cities, that would be a glacial process, and that kind of migration would only make the idea less tenable for people that choose not to move to cities. As you mention there is all the people that modify their vehicles, but even simpler--how many people with young children have a car seat semi-permanantly installed in their back seat? And the other point I never see brought up when you see these pie-in-the-sky predictions--there were 254 million motor vehicles registered in the US in 2012. (1) There were 17.55 million light vehicle sales in 2016 (2). Obviously some of the 254 million are vehicles that would not get replaced in a migration to electric/autonomous, and some people would likely migrate to an on-demand model, but it certainly suggests that a complete cut-over in 8 years time would be very difficult especially for people living in poverty who today might be driving a 20 year old vehicle that they paid $1000 for, and can't afford a new vehicle, and may have reasons that an on-demand model wouldn't work for them (rural poor for example.) (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Total_number_of_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unit... (2) http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto-sales-20170104-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto-sales-20...