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EVs use energy much more effectively and can be charged from local renewables. The import of petrol and its distribution is also a massive headache in many plac

• olliej 3y ago
  You need (at current market rates) something in excess of $10k in solar panels to be able to fully charge an EV, plus additional high power charging equipment so that you can get more than a few miles of charge per hour. The other generally available renewable is wind. Wind generators look like prices are somewhere around a dollar per watt of maximum output once you get beyond low end ~400W outputs. So again you're looking at 10s of thousands of dollars in hardware. Both Solar and Wind are not continuous generators, so you'll need batteries, which for a reasonable capacity you're looking at more than 10k. There are micro hydro generators but they all require a reasonable head and flow, and the way they throw around generation figures I couldn't work out when they were talking maximum output vs cumulative output over a day, month, or year (TBF this is a common problem with all discussions I can find about home power generation). Geothermal generators are out of the question, they're not generally available, and there's no real small scale story that generates power in "I have an EV" quantities that I can find.