YASEVS on how electric cars affect body odor coming soon...

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has released YASEVS on the world.  Their study claims that electric vehicles are not ready for the main stream and are going to be niche-only vehicles for at least the next decade.  This is due to range issues (battery life) and costs, issues will be what hold EVs back from the big time.

Personally, I happen to agree with this assessment, but that puts me in the minority of EV lovers.  While EV geeks will always get up in arms whenever YASEVS like this one goes against their grand hopes for the future, reality is not something many EV gurus seem to have a firm grasp on.

This was demonstrated when Ford’s CEO Mullaly said much the same thing last week.

I’ll quote myself to sum up this point:

I hate to burst the bubbles of these otherwise fine EV geeks, but in the real world, most people aren’t really into electric cars.  They’ve probably seen them on TV a couple of times, maybe read an article that someone sent them or that appeared in USA Today, but for the most part: cars still mean gasoline for the vast majority of the world.  Yes, this is changing, but it’s a slow process.  Even after Ford began selling his paradigm-shattering Model T, it took decades for the car to become common.

That’s just how it is.  New tech (especially the kind that requires 2-5 years of large monthly payments) isn’t going to be adopted very quickly.  When people go to the dealership and look at cars, they’re looking at the bottom line price tag that day.  Very few think about the 5-year costs or whatever (unless you’re talking about car payments).

Add to that the fact that most people expect to be able to jump into their car and drive 250 miles on Friday to spend the weekend with mom or to take the kids to the lake – something not possible in today’s pure electrics – and you have a deal-killer.  Ya, you can argue that the vast majority of us rarely (if ever) actually do that, but that’s not the point.  Most people at least dream of doing that while they’re thinking about a new car.  Just like most suburban SUV owners dream they’ll climb mountains in their off time and most desk-bound programmers assume they’re Swartzenegger-like in appearance and that the picture at Booger King is what the actual burger will look like.  These people spend as much money on dreams as they do reality.

That’s the truth of the market.  So argue all the common sense and real-world you want, you aren’t going to get through to the average consumer.  They want Mike Rowe showing them a truck hauling 5-gazillion pounds of steel and some dreamy, young blond speeding down a California highway in her convertible.  Nobody’s interested in “the average commuter drives…” and “most Americans only go about X miles per day” garbage.  They definitely don’t want a car with stupidass Star Trek sound effects coming off of it as they drive either.

Oh, and those cars competing in the X Prize?  Hate to break it to you, but not a one of them can be purchased at your local car dealer.  Sorry, EV geeks.  That’s reality.

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