re: Economist Predicts Fossil Fuel Vehicles No Longer Sold In 8 Years

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While that's a good improvement, it's nowhere near the 5-10 minutes it takes to fill the tank on an average SUV. At the very least the recharge time will mean that long-distance drivers will avoid the electric market for much longer than 8 years from now (and that doesn't even get into the BTU issue for semi's).

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Just to counter this a bit. If cost, autonomy, and range does improve. And people heavily embrace ride sharing. You can imagine some forward thinking rental companies re-structuring their business to provide customers with a service where you rent an autonomous vehicle, built for comfort of travelers, it calculates your end destination, makes vehicle stops at the companies stations along the way to charge or switch out the car, and you keep on going.

Borrow from the airline model of service and offer in-transport services that provide additional revenue streams.

Then again there is also the infant technology of roads that can charge vehicles. That the U.K. is testing out on a small, non-public scale.