Are we Trying to Force Electric Vehicles to be something they Aren’t?

Conventional vehicles have been with us for over 100 years and have become a cornerstone of our societies. They have been incrementally improved throughout their history and now represent one of the pinnacles of human engineering achievement. Indeed, some commentators have dubbed the car as one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments and they have without doubt assisted in the expansion of human prosperity.

Conventional vehicles are not however without their drawbacks and their benefits are reduced by their associated externalities. Electric Vehicles aim to address a number of these externalities and have regularly been referred to as a Disruptive Technological Innovation. What is a Disruptive Technology? Well, you can envisage the introduction of fuel injection into car engines as being a sustaining technological innovation that improves the performance of a technology without changing its fundamental structure. A Disruptive Technology is the opposite of this and breaks rather than alters the pre-existing mould. Disruptive Technologies push the frontier in nonconventional aspects of the product’s design such as significantly altering its architecture rather than providing incremental improvements on a primary attribute.

If an EV is a Disruptive Technology the question is why is so much money being pumped into trying to make EVs operate just the same as conventional vehicles? Range has been portrayed as this huge obstacle to EV uptake with consumers apparently highly unlikely to consider a car that doesn’t have the ability to go 250 miles or more on a single tank/charge. Now this may be correct when you analyze a cars attributes one at a time but it is important to always keep things in context. Instead of trying to force EVs to be something they aren’t we should be embracing their differences and selling their advantages to consumers.

A clear cut example for me is the potential of what are called Neighbourhood EVs. These are very small cars with a max speed of about 35-40 miles an hour and a small range of about 25-30 miles. Think souped-up golf cart along the lines of the G-Wiz and you won’t be too far off the mark. They can act perfectly as a second car used for shopping and social trips and come in at a cheap price as they don’t force EVs to be like conventional vehicles. A mass expansion in this market will bring with it large revenues to vehicle manufactures allowing them to further invest in EV technology so that forthcoming EV generations improve and eventually overtake conventional cars in their primary characteristics.

To some extent this is already being done, Renault’s Twizy is being aimed at this type of market. Indeed designing an EV that can be used as an urban run-around and a second family car don’t seem like being too far apart from each other. I hope more first generation EVs follow the example of the G-Wiz and Renault Twizy and produce cheap EVs designed for urban environments making short regular trips. I feel that by putting their efforts into this market segment manufacturers will be much more successful.