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Why Electric Vehicles Won’t Replace Conventional Vehicles Anytime Soon
It’s got nothing to do with range anxiety
We humans are suckers for hype, and because we’re a group species we tend to fall in behind whatever happens to be the “conventional wisdom” of the day. That’s why, pace the 1950s onward, we’re all driving nuclear-powered automobiles and piloting flying cars, living on a diet of TV dinners, wearing polyester lounge suits, crossing the globe in supersonic commercial jets, paying for everything with Bitcoin, and using blockchain shampoo in the shower.
Except of course, we’re not — because real-world constraints impose themselves on our fantasies. So let’s look at why the contemporary narrative of EVs Everywhere is in fact woefully misguided.
The first thing we can note is that for at least 70% of most ordinary people’s daily journeys, EVs have sufficient range. Now that even a budget-price EV can reliably deliver a minimum of 160 kilometers (100 miles, in old-speak) on a cold day with power-hungry systems like heating, heated seats, and the infotainment system running and deliver up to twice that range on a mild dry day, few people will worry about range unless they are planning a long journey — at which point, they’ll likely leave the EV in the garage and revert to their “old faithful” that runs on petrol.
