Electric Vehicles

Am I the only one kind of let down by electric vehicles? I’ll admit, I really want one. I honestly thought my last car purchase in 2021 would surely be an EV, but it did not work out that way. First off, I bought during the pandemic where a lot of inventory was just not available. Secondly, what was available wasn’t at the price point I wanted. Instead I went with a Bronco Sport, a zippy car with good gas mileage but certainly a gas engine is involved. Although I do like this vehicle I am disappointed that affordable electric vehicles are still no further along then when I made that last car purchase.

I want to make sure I don’t want to come off as someone totally married to the gasoline engine and I certainly don’t view EVs in the political spectrum that for some reason they’ve fallen into recently. It’s important to note that I am well aware of the power and efficiency of the electric motor. I worked for an electric motor resaler/repair shop right out of college. It was my first full time job. I know how electric motors power everything from roller coasters to elevators to the blower on your furnace. Instant torque. Fully controllable. Pretty heavy.

What then is holding EVs back? The problem really arises in the battery technology itself. They are inefficient and expensive to replace. They don’t quite pack the punch that gasoline can deliver. The charging infrastructure sucks. The mileage is way off. They are nightmares environmentally as they require mining to procure and disposal. Chemical batteries are just not where they need to be. They should be smaller and more powerful with longer shelf life. Mileage should be in the tens of thousands not in the hundreds. If one goes bad it should be as easy as popping one into your smoke alarm. Are we there yet? By all accounts not even close as of this post. Once this gets figured out though they are setup to succeed.

Battery technology is literally a barrier I do not foresee them overcoming. Yes, batteries now-a-days are amazing and the lifespan is much longer than when we used to cycle through them regularly. The “you owe me batteries” was a common saying when someone wore your electronic device down. They were expensive and not easy to get. Now they are everywhere. Why can’t we have something similar for the electric vehicles? Is one part of the equation that involves the motors themselves an issue? As far as a I can tell the basic design of an electric motor has not changed. There is still copper wire and an electric field involved. Is there an improvement that can be made there to make them more efficient? There is no doubt the electric motor is superior to the gas motor but even the gas motor has made significant achievements by incorporating turbo chargers to boost output while not sacrificing gas mileage overall.

For electric vehicles to really flourish the price also needs to come down. Imagine a $15K vehicle that got a thousand miles to a charge and was as fast as the most expensive gas super car? That’s where we want these things to go. Cyber trucks are just jokes to most people (although my children think they are awesome) but take this and make them useful with a truck bed and they’ll sell like crazy. Sure, I am describing an El Camino or Outback but despite the stigma concerning them those were useful little vehicles. Gas trucks today are totally out of hand. They are enormous and getting bigger, to the point that most don’t fit in parking spaces. They are also not as useful in my opinion as the truck beds are the same size as my Ford Ranger was from the early 2000s. Imagine a truck twice the weight of mine from back then but can haul the same amount of material. Coincidentally the person who owns my old Ford Ranger lives in my neighborhood and that old truck is still his daily driver! You don’t see many old F150s or Silverado rust buckets on the road but those old Mazda made Ford Rangers are trucking around.

To summarize, we want electric vehicles. The people who horde the gas in this world are not our friends, manipulating the price via a cartel and hurting us financially. We do not want the rumble of engines on the roads anymore, expressways are loud enough and getting louder. We don’t want the smog either, which also only seems to be getting worse and affecting our health. There is a future that gladly embraces EVs, they just have to get there to see that day.