By “not having a dog in this hunt” I meant something else. He told me this at his retirement party. That means his job doesn’t depend on what technology takes over. It also means I probably won’t have a chance to cross examine him.

That being said, he was an unbeliveably fastidious control engineer for decades. I’m going with his calculations sight unseen, not yours. And I mean that will all due respect, as I see your comments often and they are well thought out IMHO.

My point (and probably my friend Hannes’) is that your example only covers cars, where as I (and he) were talking about home/business batteries, home/business solar, solar/wind/kinetic(?) farms that also batteries, charging stations for 1.4–1.5 billion (a better estimate than yours) cars/trucks/buses and the wiring to connect all of the preceding into existing and new grids.

Ironically, I also bought a new bike in October, albeit it is my first new bike for myself in “only” about 30 years. It plus lockdown means that I take my bike or walk about 95% of the time. Great bike I can recommend to anyone reading: Cube “Attention SL”