EVs WILL have to match gas cars to win out

rreditors-blog-entry3EV advocates and journalists like to indicate that somehow it’s ridiculous/preposterous, or both, to imply that pure EVs will have to go as far as a gas car goes on a tank of gas and easily be refueld in 5 minutes or less.

Indeed, these advocates often state that it’s a “myth” EVs need to match gas cars in order to go fully mainstream, as Nikkie Gordon-Bloomfield does in the lead paragraph in a recent entry on PlugInCars.Com, Electric Car HyperCharging is Hyperbole, For Now.

Gordon-Bloomfield writes –>”There is a pervasive MYTH (my caps) that electric cars must have five-minute refueling times, and travel 500 miles between charges, before they become mainstream.”

Actually, it’s not a complete myth that EVs must match gas cars on range and fueling in order to go mainstream.

New technology adoption
EVs are pretty unusual in terms of the new technology curve, as, unlike most technologies, they don’t beat the old technology on key criteria such as versatility (hard to argue with me on this one), and convenience (many will argue with me on this, I know, but, in fact, convenience is very much tied to versatility).

{googleAds}<div style=”float:right; margin-left: 10px;”>
<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
google_ad_client = “pub-7703542917199961”;
/* 200×200,
created 12/8/09 */
google_ad_slot = “7950368454”;
google_ad_width
 = 200;
google_ad_height = 200;
//–>
</script>
<script
type=”text/javascript”
src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”>
</script>
</div>

{/googleAds}

I know EV-heads are willing to, and actually do, talk until they’re blue in the face about how EVs won’t have to match gas cars on versatility (e.g. range) and convenience (fueling time falls under this). However, they’re not just up against gas cars and gas car advocates, they’re also up against the entire new technology adoption paradigm, which is a pretty damn difficult thing to change. Perhaps not impossible, but pretty damn close.

The short of it: EVs WILL have to match gas cars on range (versatility) and convenience (fueling times, etc.), or get extremely close to doing so, before they go fully mainstream — or oil supplies will have to dry up much more quickly than they seem to be drying up right now.

Related articles–>