"Sooner" - I thought it would happen in 2012 when in Germany one of their largest energy provider "secretly" built a network of chargers which are more-less unused today.
Also, Lithium is a finite element, battery production causes quite a lot of environmental damage during extraction, manufacturing and disposal (of course not amortized to future necessary environmental cleanup, but who cares about a remote place in Zimbabwe?), all of them energetically demanding as well and the proposed scheme of paying $80/month flat fee for a battery swap as well as electricity costs might not come cheaper than fossil fuels...
battery production causes quite a lot of environmental damage during extraction
Do you have a link to more info about this? My idealized view is that Lithium is more-or-less there for the taking.[1] E.g. here is what SQM says:
Salar brines are pumped from beneath the saline crust in two different areas of the salar. In one of them, extracted salar brines contain unprecedented concentration levels of potassium and lithium.
salar brines are located in SQM's solar evaporation ponds that cover 1,700 hectares approximately. Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth, with a solar evaporation index of 3,200 millimeters and average precipitations of only 15 millimeters per year. This results in an extremely efficient process of solar energy concentration
Neither "pumping" nor "solar evaporation" seem to be so environmentally damaging. But the devil is in the details, is it not?
Also, lithium will eventually be recycled, much like current lead-acid car batteries are.
Also, Lithium is a finite element, battery production causes quite a lot of environmental damage during extraction, manufacturing and disposal (of course not amortized to future necessary environmental cleanup, but who cares about a remote place in Zimbabwe?), all of them energetically demanding as well and the proposed scheme of paying $80/month flat fee for a battery swap as well as electricity costs might not come cheaper than fossil fuels...