People Have A Hard Time With Change — But Electric Vehicles Will Dominate By 2030 – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

Steve Hanley wrote a great article about some nonsense lobbying Toyota is already engaged in following the results of the US election. I found Toyota’s complaining to be insidious, ridiculous, and laughable, so I decided I’d follow up on Steve’s piece with a quick op-ed of my own. For some reason, there are now over 300 comments on that article and a lot of them seem to be coming from anti-EV and pro-Toyota bots. I know there are also some humans in there defending Toyota and its claims as well, but several of the comments remind me a lot of these pro-Trump bots, and I guess they need something new to do now, right? In any case, I knew if there were 300+ comments on that story, there must be some really good ones. As I was reading through the thread, this is the first one that triggered a new story in my head:

“[I]t seems to me, that those that can’t see what is coming, often don’t want to see it. Hence my guess of 5 yrs+ to change the mind(s) of those less interested.

“[Sadly, I was walking the doggo’s a few days ago, chatting to a very nice and clever guy who works in the defence industry. He explained to me how BEV’s don’t work in the winter, can’t drive far, take too long to charge etc etc. It was quite funny as he told me (for instance) that you couldn’t drive to Scotland (we are in the south) in a BEV. I explained that my wife had this summer. No problems, just two 30 min stops. He explained we couldn’t drive to Heathrow airport without charging each way. I explained that I’d dropped Wifey off at Heathrow in the Spring, drove 280 miles round trip, and still had 5% left.

“He went on to explain that Tesla was now developing hydrogen cars and trucks ….. I kept on politely correcting. It was eye-opening as I typically keep my head within the greener / RE / EV world.]

Thanks to Mazter for that, a real human who has been a reader here for a long time and routinely provides good, useful commentary.

I love that first line: “it seems to me, that those that can’t see what is coming, often don’t want to see it.” We all know such people, and have talked to many such people, and are sometimes such people ourselves. The fact of the matter is, humans often have a hard time with change. On the one hand, it can be easy to dream about a fanciful futuristic world, but when it comes to changing anything in our own lives — even the smallest of things sometimes — it’s unfathomable and an affront on our belief systems and our understanding of the world. Humans resist change.

Of course, I’m sure there are some strong survival mechanisms at play here. However, they do make it hard for us to make helpful changes in our lives and adopt new, better technologies. You can have product A that you are used to and product B that is better in multiple ways but a significant departure from product A and how it works, and we will just stick with product A.

Getting more tangible again, I am somewhat bewildered by people still driving gasoline-powered cars probably every day. I spend time almost every day in the school pickup line, and we now have a lot of EVs in the line — a lot of Teslas, a VW ID.4 or two, a Rivian or two, and probably some others. It makes me wonder how much the other drivers notice this, how many of them are planning to go electric when they get a new car, and how many of them think all of the kind of myths Mazter noted above — despite so many people around them driving electric cars now.

The biggest thing I figure is common is people thinking it’s inconvenient to charge an EV and not realizing how easy, how cheap, and how convenient it is to charge at home. I figure they don’t realize they can do their normal daily driving for days before needing to charge a modern EV. I figure they don’t realize how much time they waste at gas stations and how nice it is to never have to visit one again.

They don’t know how easy it is to find charging stations (or have your navigation system automatically do so) while driving long distances.

They don’t know how much smoother and more enjoyable an electric powertrain is. They don’t know how much nicer regenerative braking and one-pedal driving is. They don’t know that there aren’t massive concerns about battery fires, battery degradation and replacement, or your car dying in the middle of traffic.

It’s normal. Most people don’t learn a lot about new tech or why it’s better than what they’re used to.

However … people will gradually experience EVs and notice their benefits. Word of mouth gets around from family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I recently had the experience talking to a neighbor who you would never think would have an interest in EVs who was suddenly gung-ho about one and planning to buy it. Her Cadillac was in for service and she was driven home in an electric Cadillac Lyriq. She fell in love with it immediately and now wants a Lyriq or Optiq.

It just takes experiencing EVs to sell them to most people. That’s how you know they are going to win. A couple of gates may fly up trying to protect those newcomers from change, but it’s now easy to talk to EV owners and learn how easy it is to charge, how little time you spend at your car charging it, and how little there is to worry about with your car’s battery. Knock down those gates and people are often ready to jump into an EV and drive it home.

Of course, while the US is still sitting below 10% of new cars being electric, we also have examples from around the world of EV sales climbing from 10% to 15% of new sales, and then to 25%, and then to 50%, and then to 70%, etc. Globally, about one out of every four new cars have a plug, and about one out of every six are fully electric. We are far, far beyond where we were 6 years ago, and we’re not going back. In another 6 years, electric cars will dominate new car sales, and people like the neighbor referenced in Mazter’s story will be few and far between.