EVs

Reading this story about GM profits falling short because of the UAW strike and the slack demand for electric vehicles gets to a good point I have made before, which is that you cannot rely on the market to get people to switch to electric. What you need is serious government invention to force the issue, like it did when lead gasoline was phased out. The truth of the matter is that people are not going to buy electric vehicles so long as they are not assured of a cheap, fast, convenient charge. Most of the people who are OK with not having those things and can afford a new car have already bought one.

Let me provide a more concrete example–me. I drive a 2010 Ford Focus with 155,000 miles. My wife drives a 2013 Honda Civic with 185,000 miles. We are going to have a buy a new car soon. I hate buying cars. I don’t need the nicest, newest thing with all the bells and whistles. It’s not a status symbol for me. I don’t like large vehicles. I do like high mileage. In short, if I have to buy a car, I need it to be not a gigantic beast to make up for my small penis and/or fear of the world. I need it to be the tool I need it to be. I don’t want to spend $50,000. And I want to get where I am going.

So I am not sure about buying an EV. First, the American cars, which I would prefer to buy because they are union, are just gigantic. I am not buying a truck or an SUV. Nope. But they hardly make anything different now, so I don’t know. I probably am more likely to buy a non-union vehicle in the end. I’m not eating Peeps at Easter just because they are a union made candy and I am not drinking Bud Light because it is union made product. I support unions but in the end, I am going to buy a car that fits my needs first.

But also, I am concerned about the infrastructure of electric vehicles. If I am driving on the freeways, which I do quite a bit, I am not overly inclined to wait 45 minutes or an hour or even longer to recharge my vehicle. That’s just not going to happen. At home, sure, that’s fine, I don’t care how long it takes. I can plug it into the garage. As this is a choice I am soon going to have to make, I……am not sure what to do yet.

I guess what I am saying is that despite what lots of people committed to the cities and hate cars are saying, this is and will remain a car-centric culture. That’s probably never changing. So the technology has to exist to get people in and out without too many problems if we want to move to a greener future. Incentives are not enough. It has to be forced. Even for me. And as part of that, it has to replicated the previous technology’s level of speed, cost, and convenience. Right now, that’s not happening and thus people aren’t buying the cars. I suppose they will once there aren’t any other choices.