Am I going crazy of has the amount of anti-EV “articles” started to skyrocket. Just today, I’ve seen a “Why I’m not buying an EV” concern article, some accusing Biden of killing EVs, “The true costs of buying an EV,” and my favorite: “Study: The True Cost of Charging an EV: $17/gallon.” (That study was funded by Exxon Mobil, lol).
What’s going on? Why is all the EV hate in the media ramping up?
New = Scary.
Just as an example: I work for a State DOT. My job involves gatekeeping the funding, to make sure the money gets spent on the appropriate things. Often projects get proposed to improve roadways through downtown areas.
Roadway safety is a big deal. It has been well known for a while now that angle parking is pretty unsafe especially in downtown areas. Back-in angle parking is much safer however. The biggest impact is for cyclists traveling past the parking. If cars have to back out into traffic, they can’t see oncoming bikes and they back into the path of the bikes. Smash…head injury. Many downtowns in the northeast have had angle parking since the 1940s.
Of course, businesses don’t want to lose any parking spaces in front, so they campaign against parallel parking or remote parking. Back-in angle would keep the same number of spaces.
On nearly all of these types of projects, we tell them the have to get rid of the traditional angle parking. We get push-back from the community because they don’t want to lose parking. We suggest back in angle parking. We invariably get a response like: “Oh, we suggested that at a public hearing, and the community was dead set against it.”
Stop and think about it for 30 seconds. When driving, it is no different. You have to back up during either maneuver. You can back up into an empty space, when you can clearly see behind, or you can back up blindly into oncoming traffic. Your average drone driver doesn’t want to think, and they don’t want to have to deal with anything new, even if it will save lives and takes no additional effort.
It isn’t rational. Asking “What is up with all the hate?” doesn’t really lead anywhere. Those EV haters will come around eventually, or they will become grumpy old men struggling to keep their ICE cars running and to find gas. Media perpetuating the archaic technology is just aimed at those sceptics, and it keeps getting produced because it makes money for the people writing it. It has nothing to do with any actual positive or negative aspects of EVs.
Just remember that we are almost at the tipping point of ~15% acceptance, after that adoption of new technologies happens pretty fast. Exxon/Mobil et. al. knows that and is trying to delay it.
19% of new cars sold in Europe in 2021 were EVs, a huge jump from 3-4% only two years prior. And then it really took off, right? Well, no. 2023 will end up at ~24% and the first half of next year will be similar. Europe will then see another sudden jump to ~33% in 2025, followed by another stretch of penetration increasing only 1-2% per year.
You can’t apply consumer-driven “S Curve” math to EV adoption. The irregular “stair step” pattern is driven by legislators and regulators. If you want to forecast EV sales look to them, not cell phone adoption curves.
It’s almost like we had a huge pandemic that heavily fucked all the supply chains… 2022 was the year for “supply isn’t keeping up with demand” in the EV space.