Originally published on CleanTechnica.
A couple of months ago, I published an article about how well electric cars work as primary cars. On the CleanTechnica repost, reader “AltairIV” made a superb comment and I asked if we could republish it. Luckily, he was happy to see it reach more eyes and enthusiastically replied, “It would be an honor!” Slow and always busy me took ~2 months to get to it, but here it finally is (following the image from BMW, and with a Fastned image added on the bottom):
It seems that it’s very hard to keep people from overly focusing the negative and de-emphasizing the positive. Lets see if an analogy will help…
Imagine you are offered a job that is comparable to your current one in duties and has about the same pay and benefits, or even a bit better. Also, 95% of the time it will be easier and you will have better working conditions than in your current position. But of course there’s a catch. For the other 5% of the time you will have to work just a bit harder than you do now, under slightly more difficult and stressful conditions.
Would you take the job? I’d say it would be foolish to turn such an offer down, wouldn’t you?
That’s what an EV is like for many people right now. 95% of the time it is perfectly suitable for their daily lives and offers benefits that ICE cars cannot. They go to work, they go to the store, they go home and plug in overnight, and the next day they’re ready to go again. No gas-ups, no oil changes or breakdowns, just quiet, clean rides with few hassles and the satisfaction of knowing that they aren’t spewing noxious emissions everywhere. But maybe about 5% of the time, generally when they need to go on longer trips, they have to put just a bit more effort into it than before. They either have to plan their iteneraries more carefully or rent a gasmobile for the trip. Nothing generally too onerous, really, but just requiring a bit of planning and foresight to manage properly.
So when we consider the overall picture honestly, do the benefits outweigh the hassles? Is having to rent a car to visit granny in Scotland twice a year really such a terrible thing?
I worry that we are attempting to sell the early majority on these severely handicapped cars. I think that could backfire. Early majority don’t like risk, and these cars have a lot of risk associated with them.
Early Majority are; “careful consumers who tend to avoid risk, the early majority adopts the product once it has been proven by the early adopters.”
LET’S BE PATIENT! Removal of the big EV risk is NOT that far away. By 2018 it looks like there will be four 200+ mile cars – these cars have a LOT less risk of disappointing early majority buyers.
Current cars designed around minimum compliance requirements are not appropriate for this group. Selling them under false premises only hurts the credibility of early adopters who argue they are.
We need to be very careful lest we look like liars and unintentionally slow the mission we hope to accelerate. I think it’s too early to cry “wolf!” about EV’s. Unless you have Tesla money, pure EV’s are still just for early adopters.
in my opinion, for a home’s second car, these make complete sense most of the time. if you look at stats and experiences of many current owners, they agree.
but if they are reading EVO & CT, they should know enough to make a smart enough decision for their own particular case.
The premise that early adopters agree range constrained EV’s make great second cars, therefore EV’s make great second cars for everyone is fallacy of excluded middle.
It does not compute. Fails logical analysis
By definition – early adopters are willing to suffer inconvenience. They are willing to overpay. They are willing to take risks and support paradigm shifting products.
They are a number of things the early majority are NOT. Justifications that work for them are not reasonable justifications to the larger marketplace.
Instead of telling consumers these cars are acceptable, we need to start telling them, and manufacturers, they are NOT acceptable. We need to STOP saying we’ll take whatever crap they give us and LIKE it. We need to make it clear to early majority these cars are only for early adopters.
Let’s make cars designed to satisfy minimum compliance FAIL. The have served their purpose, they no longer need to succeed, and should manufacturers should be rewarded for their risk avoiding deminimus approach to design?
Instead of being sheep who accept what ever crap manufacturers deem to stuff down our throats and saying “thank you” we need to find our balls and our voices and say “no, not going to help you sell this crap. Give us real cars. This is what we expect:”
If we don’t, instead of accelerating development of really great cars aren’t we actually slowing the process? After all, the design approach of the big manufacturers is to give us the very least they think they can get away with, and squeeze as much as they can out of us. Let’s stop saying “thank you sir, may I have another.”
The only thing that motivates them to give more is fear.
If we all start singing the same tune, one that is honest about how cars that go less than 200 miles suck, it’ll scare them. Let us use fear to our advantage for a change.
Okay, excluding current owners, they seem to make plenty of sense as better options for a home’s 2nd car.
But the majority of people aren’t even familiar with which models are on the market or how an electric car works, so it’s a non-matter. The people who know about them are still early adopters and first followers, and maybe a tiny number of early majority, but nothing significant. By the time the early majority are aware of the things, the choice will be 100% obvious, imho… which it needs to be for the early majority for reasons other than practicality. 😀
Right now, there are obviously two choice constrained by the same thing: expensive, long-range EVs and inexpensive (or less expensive) range-constrained cars. For people who can’t afford an obviously better Tesla, a range-constrained EV can still be a great purchase or lease.
You clearly think otherwise, but I don’t fully agree with your arguments. I think you are talking about specific people that represent a portion of the market but continue to ignore a huge portion of the population.
And I think you are ignoring the limiting factor of battery prices. Nobody has a long-range, affordable EV on the market for an obvious reason: battery prices are still too high.
I agree with everything you say. Yes, right now there are basically two choices. And for people who want EV’s but can’t afford Tesla, the range constrained choice is their only alternative.
At first I was horrified by the resale data. To the Economist in me, the numbers had potentially frightening ramifications. Would the manufacturers pull away from EV sales, from EV development?
Subsequent events lead me to think they have no choice anymore. VW is the final straw. They have to move forward, how is the question.
I see a lot of these crappy, complicated, expensive 20 mile phev’s in the pipeline and that has me concerned. This is clearly what they would like to sell us. How often do you have to plug in a 20 mile car? EVERY TIME YOU GET OUT OF IT! This represents a real problem for pure EV – having these crappy hybrids hogging every public station!
I don’t think we want these cars out there, clogging up charging stations and providing very little electrified transport. I think we are at a point we can start using consumer power to our advantage. Demand better.
That big auto has failed to put supports in place for there EV’s off lease is actually a good thing. Recasting their residual assumptions will make the cars over priced and un-sellable.
A friend was considering a 2015 Volt, when he called on it a week later the price had gone up $70 mo because they adjusted the residual down. He didn’t buy the car.
The market is saying the Leaf is a $9000 car because IT IS a $9000 car. Are they going to bring 200 miles cars, or are they just testing the waters?
We need to be loud, and make sure they are going to bring these cars.
We can be passive or active consumers. By articulating and accelerating the dialogue (that the marketplace may already be hinting at) we can make it clear they need to stop delivering the least they think they can get away with, or that get’s them carb credits, and instead start thinking about how MUCH value they can offer us.