This is a slight modification of a post I wrote for insideevs.com a few weeks ago. I was hesitating whether to cross-post it here — and now my curiosity about writing diaries in DK5 has tipped the scales.
Electric vehicles or in short EVs, drift in and out of the public limelight. Generally, in our 3+ years of driving an EV, it seems the mainstream-media vibe about EVs (when they received attention), has been more negative than positive. Regardless, from my conversations with individuals uninitiated or semi-initiated to EVs, it’s clear that outside of environmentalist circles (and even among some environmentalists) negative misconceptions seem to turn many people off towards EVs.
Actually, the more enthusiastic I seem in trying to dispel their notions, the more their eyes glaze over or even roll.
Well, maybe that’s just my amazing persuasive skills :) But in the process, I’ve recently had the epiphany I’ll share with you now. Nearly all the criticism we hear in the media against electric vehicles is based on two very simple fallacies.
The main fallacy is ignoring that modern EVs are a new technology. Almost universally, if a new technology is commercially and practically viable, then it will experience rapid improvement during its first few generations (the technology's generations, not human generations).
Most negative critique of EVs pretends (implicitly) that EVs are a mature technology, and therefore what we see from EVs now, is as good as they're ever going to get.
Oldsmobile Curved Dash, the first mass-produced assembly-line ICE car (1901-1907; 1904 shown).To understand how ridiculous this is, go no further than the early history of ICE (internal-combustion-engine) cars themselves. It took ~15 years after the first ICE automobile, for an automaker to figure out how to build cars using an assembly line. From that point onwards, progress was incredibly swift.
The first line-produced car was the reasonably-affordable Oldsmobile Curved Dash (picture). The 1901-1903 model's 1-cylinder engine had 4 HP output and 20 MPH top speed. The 1904-1907 model improved to 7 HP and 25 MPH. Hand-cranking was needed to start it. Range is hard to find, but with 5 gallons and a primitive engine it couldn't have been much.
Now, envision a journalist with a mindset like present-day EV critics, coming onto the scene in 1904. He would "Meh" at the Dash's improvements, point out that its speed is barely more than a good-quality horse carriage (not to mention a train) - certainly not worth the price, the noise and the hassle of looking for expensive fuel.
It is worth noting that America's first automotive fuel filling station would open only the following year, and the first one resembling what we'd envision as a gas station wasn't opened until 1913.
Our critic would end up ridiculing the entire automobile concept as a stupid toy for the rich to throw money at. Even considering up-and-coming rival Ford's 1904 offering, the Ford Model C with somewhat superior specs (2-cylinder 8 HP), would not convince the critic otherwise. True, in 1904 a Ford car set an amazing land-speed record of 91 MPH. But that was a one-of-a-kind monster with a 19-liter engine; definitely not anything resembling a consumer product.
Dial a mere half-decade forward, and in late 1908 Ford came out with a moving assembly-line and the Model T: an electric-ignition, 4-cylinder, 20-HP, 40+ MPH automobile having a somewhat higher price point than the Dash, but essentially a supercar by comparison (2nd picture). And within 6-7 years a new Model T cost less than half its original price, with specs and design continuously improving.
Ford Model T, the car that brought the automobile into the mainstream (1908-1927; 1919 shown).Of course, I'm not suggesting a literal comparison between EV and ICE early history. One clear difference is that... well, now we have ICE cars to compete with. And I'm sure that real antique-car afficionados can spot minor errors in my Wikipedia-based narrative above. But that's beside the point.
When car technology was young, improvements were made on a constant, continuous basis, to everything from motor to wheels to chassis to body, to arrangement of parts, and everything in between. Because the first way you manage to slap something together so that it works, is nowhere near the best way.
And humans are superb at tinkering and upgrading stuff.
Similarly, the modern EV is still very young. Improvements can and do happen across the board, and fairly rapidly. That's how it has been throughout history with any new technology. So it is utter idiocy or brazen mendacity, to pretend that for EVs, somehow, the story will be different. In fact, we are already seeing those improvements happening.