Yes, but that just makes the reliability issue smaller; it doesn’t make it go away. And as more and more turbines are constructed, making up a larger and larger proportion of the power supply, the problem will become larger.
The primary advantage of electric passenger vehicles, as already pointed out, is that the energy production medium is separate and can readily be shifted to some means that is more cost effective or less pollutive. That they are currently subject to some pretty significant limitations of capability (range, speed, density of energy storage) is a reflection of the current state of the art, not that they’re inherently less desirable. The fact that internal combustion engines (and indeed, all motive powerplants dependent upon thermo-chemical conversion) are thermodynamically limited based upon the highest temperature and pressure that the reaction can achieve relative to ambient conditions places an inherent physical limitation on how efficient these powerplants can ever be, whereas it is possible to increase the efficiency of electrical storage and transmission incrementally to values approaching unity (if we ultimately assume superconducting technologies), and power generation can utilize any natural or generated source of energy, such as solar, wind, tidal, thermal gradient, nuclear fusion, et cetera, with the only limitation being the ultimate abundance of such sources. And even fixed power generating sources that depend on thermodynamic conversion of chemical energy into mechanical have the advantage that by being fixed they can essentially accept any size of regeneration or pollution-abatement system without effective limit, as long as it makes the system more efficient. On a power generating system that has to be mobile, it just may not be effective to include regeneration systems to the most effective extent unless they justify the additional mass and packaging space required to accommodate.
The largest current problem with increasing the use of electrical vehicles (other than the above-mentioned technical limitations) isn’t power generating capability itself, but the hacktastic-ness and lack of robustness of the current power distribution grid, which simply cannot be expanded indefinitely. In order to support an increased usage of electricity for transportation there would need to be a ground up reconstruction of the distribution grid to be more modular, robust, and efficient. The technology readily exists to do this but because of the way the power industry is currently structured it is hard to find a way to foot the bill for this, despite the fact that the current grid structure is both a logistical and security problem for the United States.
To answer the o.p., electric cars will just shift the use of energy to other forms. But this allows for significant benefit of itself in being able to improve upon the inherent efficiency limits of the IC engine and being more flexible in wide-scale adoption of more efficient technologies with a very modest infrastructure cost, and reducing dependence upon uncontrolled foreign sources of energy like petroleum and natural gas. In comparison to the shift to a problematic hydrogen or methane economy, the use of electricity for the bulk of transportation requirements has substantial long-term advantages.
Stranger
Very true. But it does move in an efficient way (train) and there are considerable economies of scale compared to gas stations.
I agree, and it certainly would be complicated.
One of the uncertain (and rather infrequently discussed) aspects of EVs is the issue of battery replacement. A properly maintained modern vehicle should last well past 200,000 miles. My understanding is that optimistic assumptions for EVs would call for at least one and very possibly two full battery replacements to reach that. So the cost of this - including the energy and pollution cost of manufacturing and disposing of those batteries - needs to be part of the analysis.
If anything I suspect its worse than just a shift in energy use and we’ll see an example of Jevons paradox with total energy use actually increasing.