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Counterpoint: consumers can embark on a long road trip with a gasoline powered car with zero planning or research with respect to refueling. If electrics want w

Counterpoint: consumers can embark on a long road trip with a gasoline powered car with zero planning or research with respect to refueling. If electrics want wider adoption in the free market, that is something that will need to be addressed.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
You don't need to do the planning ahead of time, your passenger does it on the road on the giant touchscreen. And it's really simple, you're just choosing restaurants and hotels based on availability of charging.
- TrevorJ 4y ago
  A fair point, and many early adopters are perfectly willing modify their behavior in these small ways to make an electric workable. There's another segment of the market that will likely only open up once fast electric charging networks are ubiquitous enough to exist off of (nearly) every major highway exit.
notacoward 4y ago
It's too simplistic to say that the charging situation needs to be addressed before the cars become viable. It's a real chicken and egg problem. The charging infrastructure and the variety of use cases that EVs cover need to be addressed together. Right now, EVs are fantastic as second cars, or for people who never drive more than an hour or so at a time, or for specific longer trips where you know and are comfortable with the charging options. That's enough to get more EVs on the road, which will provide economic incentive for a higher density of chargers, which will be enough to enable even longer trips without burdensome planning, and so the cycle continues. That's how free markets actually work. Demanding a one-sided "big bang" approach is tantamount to demanding deliberate distortion of the market (whoever goes first needs to be supported by some external means), which itself a good way to ensure that EV adoption remains slow. It doesn't seem like a particularly good-faith argument.
- TrevorJ 4y ago
  I think you slightly misunderstood my point - I'm not arguing that we should or shouldn't built out a denser charging network. I'm just pointing out that from the standpoint of the consumer today, the fact that they can't hop in an electric and drive across country with the same lack of planning that they can with a gasoline vehicle is potentially significant. Obviously many people are ok with that tradeoff, but it's likely that a much larger portion of the market will open up to electrics once consumers can essentially treat their electric as they would any other car. I suspect that ultimately the solution will be a combination of many things working together: consumer education, longer range batteries, denser charging networks.
cbmuser 4y ago
That’s exactly the point. We already have solved that problem with technology and there is a reason why battery-powered cars never took off and never will despite already being around for more than a hundred years.
- TrevorJ 4y ago
  Eh - the problem isn't intractable. Consumers do change their behavior when they are communicated with properly, and the technology has reached the correct inflection point. It's possible battery tech never gets to the point where it has mass-market appeal, but I don't see any reason to assume that will be the case in the long term. The iPhone is a great example. We had PDA's for a long time, but the tech wasn't quite good enough for mass adoption until the iPhone. On the consumer communication front, Apple pitched the iphone as three different devices that consumers could instantly understand: 1. A better music player 2. A better phone 3. An internet communications device. Critically, once Apple educated people on how to think of the new product, they were able to drop that messaging and move on.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

You don't need to do the planning ahead of time, your passenger does it on the road on the giant touchscreen. And it's really simple, you're just choosing restaurants and hotels based on availability of charging.

TrevorJ 4y ago
A fair point, and many early adopters are perfectly willing modify their behavior in these small ways to make an electric workable. There's another segment of the market that will likely only open up once fast electric charging networks are ubiquitous enough to exist off of (nearly) every major highway exit.

notacoward 4y ago

It's too simplistic to say that the charging situation needs to be addressed before the cars become viable. It's a real chicken and egg problem. The charging infrastructure and the variety of use cases that EVs cover need to be addressed together. Right now, EVs are fantastic as second cars, or for people who never drive more than an hour or so at a time, or for specific longer trips where you know and are comfortable with the charging options. That's enough to get more EVs on the road, which will provide economic incentive for a higher density of chargers, which will be enough to enable even longer trips without burdensome planning, and so the cycle continues. That's how free markets actually work. Demanding a one-sided "big bang" approach is tantamount to demanding deliberate distortion of the market (whoever goes first needs to be supported by some external means), which itself a good way to ensure that EV adoption remains slow. It doesn't seem like a particularly good-faith argument.

TrevorJ 4y ago
I think you slightly misunderstood my point - I'm not arguing that we should or shouldn't built out a denser charging network. I'm just pointing out that from the standpoint of the consumer today, the fact that they can't hop in an electric and drive across country with the same lack of planning that they can with a gasoline vehicle is potentially significant. Obviously many people are ok with that tradeoff, but it's likely that a much larger portion of the market will open up to electrics once consumers can essentially treat their electric as they would any other car. I suspect that ultimately the solution will be a combination of many things working together: consumer education, longer range batteries, denser charging networks.

cbmuser 4y ago

That’s exactly the point. We already have solved that problem with technology and there is a reason why battery-powered cars never took off and never will despite already being around for more than a hundred years.

TrevorJ 4y ago
Eh - the problem isn't intractable. Consumers do change their behavior when they are communicated with properly, and the technology has reached the correct inflection point. It's possible battery tech never gets to the point where it has mass-market appeal, but I don't see any reason to assume that will be the case in the long term. The iPhone is a great example. We had PDA's for a long time, but the tech wasn't quite good enough for mass adoption until the iPhone. On the consumer communication front, Apple pitched the iphone as three different devices that consumers could instantly understand: 1. A better music player 2. A better phone 3. An internet communications device. Critically, once Apple educated people on how to think of the new product, they were able to drop that messaging and move on.