I quote "to make plug-in electric vehicles as affordable to own and operate as today’s gasoline-powered vehicles by 2022". This is wishful thinking that cannot happen because we know that the 100kwh battery that is needed for 300 miles range in an average size car will cost Tesla 20,000 USD to make at the pack level including gross profit in 2020 and everyone else that does not own a 50Gwh factory will need 30,000 USD to make this battery pack.

However, drop old thinking about car ownership and stereotypes about what a car is and we can make zero emission transportation far more affordable than economy gassers by 2022. This is how it could be done.

You make a self-driving two-seater that uses a 40kwh battery to go 300 miles per charge. It can go 300 miles on 40kwh because it only has two seats in succession and therefore has half the air drag as a four seat car. It can also be made to weight less than half as much as a typical four seat car because it is half the size and can use low weight materials more intensively. Low weight materials like high strength aluminium and carbon fibre are expensive but with a car that is half the size you do not need as much of these high cost materials as in a full size car and because the car is autonomous it can be operated as a tireless taxi working 24 hours a day 7 days per week throughout the year apart from time spend charging and receiving cleaning services. It should easily be able to log 100,000 miles per year instead of 15,000 miles per year in a privately owned car. The point being that 1 USD of capital expenses for the car is split on 7 miles instead of 1 mile. However, the car will be expensive to make. About 8000 USD for the battery, another 8000 USD for computers and sensors enabling its self driving capability, 5000 USD for redundancy of driving critical systems and 24,000 USD for everything else so about 45,000 USD. The car will have a service life of 1,000,000 miles or five times longer than what is realistic with combustion engines or fuel cells. So capital cost is 4.5 cents per mile. Doing 300 miles of 40kwh costing 6 cents per kwh charging at night will cost less than 1 cent per mile ((0.008=40*0.06)/300). Insurance cost will be very low as well because the self-driving car will have nearly none accidents that are caused by its own failures and it has the videos evidence to prove it. Cleaning and occasional maintenance will cost but expect less than 3 cents per mile. Total operator costs will be roughly 11 cents per mile that could sell for 15 cents per mile to be highly profitable for the operator. This is less than half the cost of driving a mile in a Toyota Camry and much lower than the 1.4 USD per mile that taxis with human drivers are charging today.

The car will be ordered using a Smartphone and because these self-driving taxis are everywhere in the cities and the suburbs they will arrive within a minute of ordering it. You pay extra for the option to drive alone, you also pay more the more you and your luggage weight as it will mean more electricity consumption and more wear down on the car. The car will have sensors that measure the weight. So kids will pay less. You also pay extra if you spill food or beverage that require a cleaning. The car will have cameras and an IA system that can determine that and if you object to the AI administrated fine a human operator can be called instantly to make a final decision. The cars will also have explosive detectors to minimise the chance that someone use these cars for terror. You can also use this cars to deliver stuff to relatives or friends without being in the car yourself. However, you will pay extra if the receiving party is not at the supposed location at the supposed time. If you only need the car for transporting stuff to someone this option is set on your Smartphone and the two seats will be mechanically folded down to allow for maximum cargo space. This is already done when the car arrives. If you are more than 2 people that need to go somewhere together you can just order more two seat self-driving taxis or alternatively pay a lot more and get a four seat or 8 seat car that will be rarer and therefore have longer time to arrive. Anything is possible but we need self-driving cars to do it.

@Lad: Such is the nature of government agencies who are basically forbidden to "play favorites" as far as manufacturers go, and therefore resort to a scattershot approach.

You pay for the self-driving taxi using your Smartphone and the amount will include VAT as it does for any other purchase of goods and services. Otherwise you as a taxi customer are not responsible for anything. The taxi operator will pay for insurance or more likely be self-insured and also pay corporate taxes on profits made. I imagine the worlds largest operators of self-driving taxis will be Google, Apple, Uber, Lyft, and Tesla. The business approaches will be different though. Apple will have contractors make the cars but will operate and design the cars themselves like they do with the iPhone. Tesla will design, build and operate the taxis themselves. Google will make the self driving technology and operate data canters and make maps but they will only operate a limited taxi fleet themselves for demonstration purposes (like the nexus brand). Google's main business is to licence the technology to any other companies that want their cars to be self driving for whatever reason and operate the data canters behind it. Uber and Lyft will be taxi operators first and foremost but will probably also develop their own self driving technology in order not to pay royalties to a company like Google. Today's automakers that produce gassers will all go bankrupt if they believe gassers has a future or they will adapt and start making these BEV self driving cars and write off all of their gasser IP and factories that produce gas engines and complex transmissions. It is going to be dramatic no matter what and be the fastest transformation of the worlds largest industry the world has ever seen. If the first self-driving taxi service starts between 2020 and 2025 I believe the entire transformation of the global auto industry will be complete 20 years later. So in 2040 to 2045 there will not be any gassers left apart from museums and as hobbies for nostalgias.

Yes, automated e-taxis and e-buses (all sizes) will come.

One way to reduce the number of vehicles on the roads/streets would be to share higher capacity taxis (mini-buses?)

UBER could manage an effetive lower cost sharing system with various pick-ups on the way. Cost per passenger would be automatically adjusted while maintaining a fair profit margin for operators.