Comment by somerandomqaguy
14 days ago
I'd call the that country that adopted EV's first and gasoline second... extinct after WW2. If nothing because the country wouldn't be able to launch an airforce to counter the bombers hitting your power plants. If not that then there's the constant contention of having to pull power lines forward and leaving them vulnerable to artillery fire while the petrol tank hit and run with impunity.
Plus now you have problems moving tonnes of food, water, ammunition on BEV vehicles that no longer have reliable charging access. Being unable to supply your military is more or less a death knell for any fighting force.
Even setting aviation aside, a lot of the reason why gas engines were adopted was because agriculture was among the first to do so, they were less finicky then ox and horses. Rural areas didn't have access to electricity like cities did at the time though; It was a lot easier to have a tin of whatever liquid fuel (gasoline was a byproduct of kerosone production at the time).
I didn’t say EVs would be used for military vehicles. It’s more like a scenario where 80% are buying EVs and 20% are buying ICE.
Again the hypothetical was modern EVs with modern infrastructure.
And this hypothetical isn’t that crazy. Many Chinese car buyers’ first vehicles are electric, and many of those people buying cars are quite used to electric scooters as their transportation method.
Speaking of wars, how many wars for oil would be avoided if there wasn’t a widespread dependency on cheap oil? If the gas price ever goes above $5-7/gallon in America it basically triggers a recession.
>Really step back and imagine a world where the modern EV [1] was first to market and a gasoline combustion engine was second.
.... you worded that extremely poorly. Being first to market is completely different then someone's personal first experience. Between that first sentence and the follow post, it's like reading the question what if the smartphone came out before the electric telegraph.
If you're trying to say like a future time when we've got fast chargers everwhere with no need for an app, and at home charging is common which makes BEV's 80% of the market? Sure that makes sense. Probably it's going reality by 2040 or so.
But for me right now, as is, I'd probably still sticking to ICE, or MHEV engines for a while. No easy access to home charging, and I don't have data on my phone which makes fast charging way more complicated. And I don't drive enough KM in a year to make break even point in costs reasonable.
And I've test driven BEVs and I could afford to buy a BEV. The advantages don't outweigh the drawbacks in my situation at least, and there wasn't enough there for me to want to just put objectivity aside.
Per your third paragraph, that’s exactly what I’m saying. If BEVs of modern capability were either first to market and/or the first car-buying experience, those network effects and preconceptions/biases wouldn’t be a big buying hurdle like they are today.
I did mention the three major drawbacks: fueling time on long trips, extra curb weight, and cost. But I also mentioned that even in the non-hypothetical status quo, these issues are almost certainly going to be solved soon (let’s say by 2040 like you picked out). In a world where BEVs came first, these issues would likely already be solved. Automakers weren’t really investing any development money before the 1990s, so our current BEVs are like owning a gasoline car from the 1950s in terms of time spent in the development oven. Now you have every battery technology company on the planet in an arms race to deliver the next big thing for automotive applications.
Remember that gas stations weren’t on very corner when the gasoline car was invented, either.
Don’t read what I said as some kind of exact computer science logical language-qualified statement where I must say the exact correct parameters, you understand my general point.
I also think your use of your personal anecdote isn’t a very convincing argument by itself. BEVs aren’t right for you as of today, in a world which isn’t a part of this hypothetical. You also pointed out that you are a minority outlier by having odd requirements like “I don’t have data on my smartphone.” Do you think that’s common? I think most people even un in developing countries have smartphone data access. Isn’t this argument kind of like saying gasoline pumps need to take cash to become popular? Of course they took cash in 1990 since most of their users still primarily used cash. In today’s status quo, most EV owers are the kind of person to own a smartphone. (And of course, this is already a non-issue for Tesla owners, and increasingly a non-issue for other manufacturers who are adding the ability to “just plug in” to major charging networks, something that would obviously not be an issue if BEVs came first)
The USA should be an ideal EV market but there are consumer perceptions that are barriers.
Over half of homes in US housing stock are single family houses with implicit access to charging. Daily commutes are around 40 miles. I argue that we should logically see ~50% of new vehicles being EVs but we are way below that number and I put that on customer familiarities and preconceptions.
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