Bikes and motorcycles get a lot of use in Europe. Less in the winters, of course, but there’s always plenty of them about. And for sure riders are using them to go to/from work, small grocery runs, etc. I’d guess that some folks would be able to replace at least some car trips with e-bike/e-motorcycle trips, especially if the latter had removable batteries so that it was possible to charge the battery in your flat.
ABRP and PlugShare. Between the two, I think OP will have virtually all of the info they will need for the charging aspects of their trip. ABRP for the route and suggested charging points + charging amounts. PlugShare to check in advance of a stop if the charging point tends to have issues or not.
Hungary is indeed where op will have to be a bit flexible/careful, but - again - between PlugShare and ABRP they’ll have all the info needed.
Yes, there could be a trade war or other issue that makes parts/replacements difficult to acquire. It’s not likely, but it could happen. Think of it the same as you would for very small production number cars - some parts can be difficult or impossible to acquire after just 7-9 years from final production.
With VW, Stellantis, etc… you know they’re going to be around for quite a while and if, somehow, they went out of business in a year there would be spare parts for quite a while as their cars are popular.
So… you can roll the dice. It’s a small risk but it will probably be ok. BYD, etc look like they are very eager to expand. Thus there should be the ability to get spares for the foreseeable future.
You might try asking in the /r/electricvehicles Weekly Advice thread or /r/EuroEV Weekly Advice thread if you’re in Europe.
Basically, there is an EV that will fit most needs, unless your budget is terribly restrictive or very unusual (e.g. medical courier that does 400 miles a day).
For me, at least, I just started reading about BEVs. Specifically, the reviews of cars I was interested in… and, quite frankly, of reading comments in /r/electricvehicles and /r/electriccars to see the sorts of issues and praise people had regarding BEVs.
My wife and I, located in Poland, did a 9.5 kWp solar installation almost two years ago. It cost around 42k PLN (~10.5k USD), though we got back almost 18k PLN in tax breaks ($4400 USD). So it really wasn’t very expensive.
The cost of electricity here is currently at 0.7 PLN/kWh (~0.163 USD/kWh)… which doesn’t seem like much, but you have to remember that we earn like a quarter of the average salary in the US. So the electricity here isn’t considered particularly inexpensive.
We’ll have the solar panels paid off in about five years, give or take a year depending on whether electricity prices go up more, and a couple of other variables.
Two years ago my wife and I bought a battery electric lawn mower (Ego). It’s worked out very well, so we bought a string trimmer from the same company. Both are really quiet and I like that, for the lawn mower, it folds up into about the space of a big suitcase and can stand upright, so it doesn’t take a lot of space in the autumn and winter when it isn’t being used.
I kind of feel the same, but I also wanted to try to get some data. I decided to check on Greenway, who I think is the biggest operator of charging stations in Poland - they claim they have 2500 stations. Out of the 2500, I checked the issue status of any charging location in Poland where the issues were raised 14+ days ago and I went back 60 days. Oddly, Greenway will note when there is an issue with a charger, but not when the issue is resolved. So I had to check this all manually. I looked at issues 14+ days ago because I feel that 14 days is probably about the quickest such issues are ever going to be fixed by any company.
From 14+ days ago and going back 60 days, I noted 18 charging locations impacted (one or more plugs not operational/lower charging speeds). Of those 18, 13 issues had been resolved and 5 issues were yet to be resolved. Both the quantity of issues and quantity of resolved issues seems quite reasonable to me.
Environmentally friendly + for my wife and I, it makes very good financial sense … but our situation is fairly unique.