Technofreak:

 

BEV may well be the future for light vehicles but heavy vehicle manufacturers are working on using other energy sources.

From a long term environmental and economic perspective I'm yet to be convinced batteries are the best option. While EV batteries get repurposed with a second life, right now there is no defined way to recycle the parts of a BEV battery. Part of the problem is not all EV batteries are the same so different processes may be required. Recycling is currently expensive to the point it is cheaper or as cheap to go and mine the raw materials rather than recycle. Also some recycling processes are very energy intensive.

The real concern I have for us in New Zealand is we won't have the economies of scale to do the recycling here and we could end up as we have done with some plastics. We can't recycle and we cannot send oversea to recycle either.

 

 

 

EDIT.

 

I'm not so sure the rest of the world has given up on hydrogen.  Honda are still talking about fuel cells vehicles in this recent article Honda EV commitment

 

VW and Scania (which is owned by VW) have pulled away from fuel cells but that doesn't mean hydrogen isn't in their future. This article talks about Scania's joint venture to use a High Pressure Direct Injection (HPDI) hydrogen fuel system Scania and Westport Fuel System will cooperate in hydrogen research project

 

This article is about some of the current hydrogen developments including companies like Daimler Benz and Volvo Hydrogen might still make sense 

 

I'd suggest the accelerating BEV uptake you mention is being driven by emissions regulations and the current lack of a better alternative rather than by what may ultimately be the best technology long term.

 

The convenience and ability to charge at home is not universal. In many parts of the world and even in a lot of parts of New Zealand cars are parked outside and on the street rather than inside or close to a charging point. It's not possible/practical for a lot of people to charge at home. There will remain the need for a centralised fuel source even for BEV's.

 

You can't really compare EV battery recycling to plastic recycling in New Zealand. One is significantly more valuable than the other. Infact, Tesla disagrees with your statement that it's easier to get resources from the ground vs recycling them from old packs. As you'll see in the link, in the future Tesla sees that they will no longer be getting their materials from mining but rather from old packs. With that in mind, it won't matter if NZ has its own capabilities to recycle or not - companies like Tesla will be happy to take them and send them to their nearest factories to recycle them.

Scania has a statement on the future of their hydrogen developments, basically saying that they don't see it as efficient enough for actually powering transport but useful for forging steel to make their trucks. True, Honda hasn't said they have fully given up on Hydrogen but they have discontinued the only hydrogen vehicle they currently make.

Not having offstreet parking doesn't need to mean that one can't make an EV work. Infact, many countries are now adding street side charging for just that reason. As you'd expect with offstreet parking being a novelty there, the UK has started looking into adding this through a number of ways, such as adding chargers to street lights or pop up charge poles. The problem is solvable.