COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN
Lack of models, not
charging points, 'holding back electric car market'
Analysis shows just 20
battery models on sale in Europe against more than 400 conventional ones
Electric cars are not practical at this time. Full stop.
The graph you display in this article is highly deceptive,
and a person can only know that by reading the labels on the axes carefully.
These "Full year new registrations for pure electric
cars" represent a drop in the bucket in absolute numbers or as a portion
of the total car pool, close to insignificant in numbers while the graph, at a
quick glance, gives an appearance of rocketing growth.
You know, it is just the nature of numbers that when there
is very little of something, a small amount of growth looks big in percentage
terms. When you have two of something, and you get one more, you have an
amazing 50% growth.
If the technology emerges for durable, lighter batteries
that hold a long charge and do not take long to charge, then you will see some
genuinely dramatic numbers.
But we are not there, despite all the blow-hard claims at
Tesla. The sales of cars like Tesla in many markets depend entirely on
subsidies which are starting to falter.
We've had electric vehicles since at least 1908, but they
have never claimed a serious market share - except for special-purposes like
trucks running indoors in plants - and with very good reason.
It isn't "perceptions" that affect electric
vehicles - that is, quite simply, the thinking of marketing and promotional
types with a pie-in-the-sky bias.
It is their basic inability, still, to do almost all the
jobs for which we use cars and trucks.
And that, as anyone should be able to see, is a pretty
serious shortcoming.
When they can do those jobs, you won't need questionable
articles like this one.
By the way, this entire matter is larger and more complex
than simple stories make it appear.
We do have evidence that current electric cars - analyzed
over their entire life-cycle as they should properly be - are as, or more
polluting than, our efficient petroleum-powered ones.
There are many effects involved, including the weight of
batteries creating more polluting debris dust from tires and road surfaces.
So, hold on to your very premature enthusiasms.
