[First draft ca. 2019; subsequent addenda at end]
Apparently there is (still) controversy over electric vehicles! I understand why some people aren't interested in them (yet) but I don't understand why anyone fails to realize that the internal combustion engine ("ICE") automobile will eventually join the illustrious ranks of the horse and buggy, the black and white TV, and the 8-track audio tape. We can argue about timing and I'll do that at the end of this essay which describes the way I see it. You may take this with a grain of salt. I'm not an automotive expert, pundit, salesperson, mechanic, or current investor. I'm an O.F. buy-and-hold owner of cars and presently own two EVs, one of which I bought in late 2012. It's going strong, losing about 1% of its battery capacity annually. At that rate, it might outlast me.
With respect to adopting EV technology, there seem to be six kinds of people:
The Tree Huggers (no offense intended) will do anything to protect the environment. They understand that EVs produce no noxious emissions in operation and they have at least grudging faith that governments will promote increasingly clean ways to produce and procure electricity. These folks will buy electric cars as soon as they can barely afford them. Like me.
The Technophiles are classical early adopters. They will buy electric cars as soon as they can practically afford them. The most practical among them may delay until their current wheels show sufficient evidence of wearing out so that they can declare "I need a new car!"
The Cautious Adopters, like the Tree Huggers and the Technophiles, know in their hearts that they want to convert but will wait until their Technophile brother-in-law says it's time and they have easy access to overnight or fast chargers.
The Skeptics will wait until the charging infrastructure is fully built out and service stations that still sell gas begin to dwindle.
The Technophobes will wait until it is illegal to manufacture ICE cars. Once the gummint says "Go!", they'll do it.
The Reprobates will wait until it is illegal to drive an ICE car. You can see them today, in parking lots around the country, intentionally blocking access to EV chargers.
Range Anxiety
[Tongue in cheek:] Range anxiety has been a big issue in the gas-vs-electricity debate. I understand. When I was driving with gas, I always feared running out before I got to the office if I was running late and didn't want to make the five minute stop. Sometimes I'd sneak out at lunch time to gas the car so I wouldn't have to do it during the evening rush hour. This will only get worse as gas stations begin converting to high-speed charging stations, retiring hard-to-maintain and increasingly unpopular gas pumps.
But seriously, let's take a fresh look at range. A typical ICE car can go about 300 miles on a fill-up. Many people fill up when the warning light comes on with perhaps 50 miles remaining. That means that, on average, when they get up in the morning and head out for work, school, shopping or play, they have about 175 miles left in the tank ( (300-50)/2 + 50 = 175). That's not bad and usually not an issue. But let's look at a typical EV - it can go about 200 miles on a nearly-full, battery-life-optimizing, over-night charge which it receives in the garage or driveway while the owner sleeps and electricity prices are lowest. So it has all of those 200 miles of range every morning, a bit more than the ICE car has! Yes, in these days of improved fuel efficiency, some gas cars have more than 300 miles of range. And some EVs have more than 200 miles of range. The numbers remain very close.
The average American drives about 1,000 miles per month or 35 miles per day, a big chunk of that on a daily commute. With 200 miles "in the tank" each morning why worry? For most people's daily drive, range is simply not an issue.
Ahhh, you're concerned about those long road trips on weekends and vacations!? If you're not at home overnight to charge while you sleep, whatever will you do? There are public charging stations almost everywhere now, usually with one of a few standardized connectors that will accommodate nearly any plug-in electric car. Many, however, charge no faster than the outlet in your garage - say 235V at 40A Continuous which is good for 27 miles of added range per hour of steeping on my joule-guzzler. If you drive 200 miles in three or four hours, you don't want to sit for six or eight hours waiting for a slow charge before getting back on the road! Proprietary high speed chargers, like those provided by Tesla only for their own vehicles, can add back those 200 miles while you eat lunch or browse the factory outlet stores (or whatever). It might take an hour if you manage to run your battery down almost to zero (which you won't). The challenge is getting back to the car in time to move it out of the way so others can charge. You're OK if you just grab fast food, but fine dining might take a little too long. Slip the valet $5 to move it for you? You'll figure it out. If you're an aging male on a long road trip, you might need to stop every two hours to swap bodily fluids and can pick up more miles than you just drove while walking to and from the Gents'. Well, almost. Tesla isn't the only provider of high-speed charging. There are public stations as well with similar performance characteristics. Check 'em out.
And then there are apartment dwellers, a growing segment of the population as the American Dream shifts from the two-car garage in the lazy 'burbs to a loft or more in the exciting city. Some of these folks park on the street or in lots or garages that don't have charging outlets. Yet. Lobby your Congressperson. If you live within 200 miles of either oceanic coast, you should get a sympathetic hearing. When will EV charging be mandatory in new, multi-family construction? Sooner than you might think!
Welcome to the EV charging infrastructure. It's growing every day. See, for example, this report on Ford. As EVs slowly (and then more quickly) take over, this infrastructure will grow, eventually subsuming the traditional gas station. Those stations, by the way, represent a nice chunk of real estate on which charging cables can replace gas hoses, some at first, all eventually. See, for example, this report of the first one. And now, fast food outlets (pun intended) are in the game - there will soon be several hundred fast chargers in operation at McDonalds restaurants in Sweden and the Netherlands. It's happening, folks. Here in the U.S., too.
Maintenance
This one is a no-brainer comparison: An EV requires:
no oil changes
no other fluid changes except windshield washer fluid
no engine air filter changes
no throttle body flushes (whatever that is)
no tune-ups
no timing belt replacement
likely no brake jobs (EVs have brakes but you use them very lightly because regenerative braking does most of the work, slowing the vehicle while generating electricity and storing it in the battery.)
In addition, an electric motor has only a handful of moving parts. A gasoline engine and transmission have hundreds. Of course, if you "trade horses" every two years, those parts won't fail, right?
EVs do have systems that are comparable to those in ICE cars - HVAC, entertainment, navigation, power seats, door latches, suspension, traffic detectors, adjustable mirrors, tires, and all sorts of other failure-prone devices. Those bits won't be any more or less reliable, on average across the entire fleet, than those in ICE cars. And body shops will continue to thrive, at least until the predicted safety benefits of auto-driving autos materialize. (I'm "cautiously skeptical" on that one, mainly because of legal and liability issues that will be slow to resolve.) Regardless, EVs won't put the automobile service industry out of business. They'll just make it smaller and focused on accessories rather than engines.
The argument is stacked in favor of the EV except for one problem - automobile "dealerships" don't make money selling cars. They make money performing maintenance. They understand that the lifetime maintenance bill on an EV is a small fraction of that of an ICE car. Would you sacrifice, say, 80% of your profits so you could sell an environmentally cleaner vehicle that's more fun to drive and rarely goes into the shop? Would your dealer? Maybe now you're figuring out why so many of the early electrics from mainstream auto manufacturers were so breathtakingly ugly. But they're coming around. All of them.
Hybrids
As a stop-gap solution, hybrids have been surprisingly (to me) successful. Until the charging infrastructure is built out (See Range Anxiety above.), that gasoline engine can be comforting to some. It's small and gets better mileage than a pure gasoline car. But a hybrid contains all the parts of an ICE car plus all the parts of an electric, plus a bunch of additional parts in the engine/motor transfer case. Hybrids are the last surviving dinosaurs of the ICE Age.
Buying
Ah, yes! Buying a car - one of the precious joys of American life: First, a drooling moron explains that he's new on the job so he doesn't know much but he's willing to tell you anything you want to hear (true or not). Then he drives you off the lot and lets you take the wheel for an exhilarating spin around the block, which should be enough to convince anyone that it moves. OK, it was less than a thorough test and less than informative patter but, having already made up your mind from more meaningful sources (the Internet and your brother-in-law), you say "Let's do it!" Then you enjoy the sublime experience of sitting in a 4x6' cubicle for three hours doing third-party negotiation with the moron's invisible "manager," an experience punctuated by multiple 20-minute waits while the moron actually takes other suckers, ... er, "prospects" ... around the same block and deposits them into other, nearby cubicles through which he can play musical chairs. Finally, having exhausted your trove of technical tidbits and financial fancies, you settle on a price with the invisible manager via his moronic proxy, receive congratulations for your negotiating skills having achieved the best price of the month (says the moron), and get a grand escort ... to yet another desk where a quick-sales artist tries to sell you such indispensable tidbits as underbody coatings (say, in Texas?), service policies ("Psst! Wanna buy some insurance?"), and contributions to the local Friends of the Undereducated Wannabe Worker. By then, the prep shop staff are gone for the day, but you can pick it up tomorrow between 10:15 and 10:22 AM if you can find a place to park.
Would you like to buy a Tesla? Sorry, none of the above applies. Go to their Web site, click some links, fill in a form, arrange payment, and get an estimated delivery date. It's kind of like shopping on Amazon, only more expensive. Don't like the deal? Wait a week - it keeps changing. No negotiating, though. Gee, that's enough to drive you back to the ICE car dealership, eh?
Price
The first practical EVs were frighteningly expensive. Tesla, for example, had a conscious and clever strategy of going after The One Percent first with the $80-120K Models S and X, generating revenue, experience, and reputation before committing the resources needed to launch a more reasonably priced vehicle, the $40-60K Model 3. So-called "mainstream" manufacturers, with their much deeper pockets, first introduced the aforementioned compliance cars to show regulators that they were Doing Something. But now there are some true, practical EVs that approach Everyperson affordability and look more like cars than SFMOMA exhibits. Expect more soon, but how fast manufacturers will overcome dealer reticence remains to be seen. Some may have to invent a new business model for selling and servicing cars. That's what Tesla did. Of course, the dealers in most states do own politicians who protect their sinecures with laws prohibiting direct sales by manufacturers, so it's not going to be easy for the big name companies. They might have to incentivize their dealers financially to sell cars that don't require much maintenance. My heart bleeds for them.
Conclusion
Better, faster, arguably cheaper ... the only things missing are instant delivery off the lot and the salesmoron. But you don't have to buy an easy-peasy Tesla in order to go electric. There are thousands of conventional dealers who will at least grudgingly sell you an EV from a mainstream manufacturer, provided you test drive a few "far superior and less expensive" gas guzzlers that the dealership would much rather sell to you and maintain for you until hell freezes over or the car wears out, whichever comes first. Guess.
Timing
It's happening folks. Here are my believed-conservative timing predictions:
2025: EV sales catch up with ICE car sales.
2030: 40% of all gas stations have installed some chargers and virtually all large retail parking lots are equipped. Congress outlaws manufacture and import of ICE cars effective 2040 and mandates charging capabilities in all new housing effective immediately. Lots of exemptions for builders who are related to politicians.
2035: 30% of all gas stations have gone out of business and virtually all the rest have installed at least some chargers. (Since most Americans will be able to plug in at home, we don't need as many stations as we did in the gassy era, so their reduced numbers are not a problem for anyone except their owners.)
2040: As the build ban takes effect, 95% of manufacturing capacity is EVs. Congress outlaws driving ICE cars on public roads effective 2050. It becomes difficult to find gasoline in many areas at the Federally-mandated minimum price of $30/gal (the combined result of inflation, taxation, incentivization, and reduced demand).
2050: It's over. I'm dead, but my grandchildren are all driving electric. Welcome to the future.
It could be faster. Talk to your brother-in-law.
Addendum
Yeah, I'm a Tesla fan-boy. That company really launched the EV revolution that has now broadened to all of the conventional auto makers. Their Model 3 may well be the "best" all-around EV out there, and one of the best cars in general, on the market. But to be fair to the mainstream makers, I need to point readers to this review of the Chevy Bolt: Chevy Bolt Review. For roughly half the price of a Model 3, they offer a very practical alternative. I haven't driven one yet, but it sounds like GM could push the conversion to electricity even faster than Tesla. Hmm.
And this just in (1/28/2021): GM has announced that, effective 2035, they will produce no more gas or diesel cars: GM Conversion. Compare that to my original suggested timeline above.
And more (4/23/2021): Washington State has leapfrogged California in mandating that all cars be electric by 2030. See Clean Cars 2030.
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Revised 23Apr2021