EV or not EV, that is the question | opinion

I like technology. Always have. As a young photographer, I worked in a camera store to save enough money to buy a color enlarger for my darkroom. It’s always been like that. As a radio station, we were first to the newfangled CDs and then to streaming digital audio. Early adoption is my thing, and sometimes it is painful. That’s the case today as we’re moving our Chevy Bolt fire hazard to the curb after it’s charged because we’re not too interested in the car suddenly exploding and burning down the house.

It appears that GM sourced the traction batteries in our bolt from LG Chem in South Korea and that this batch suffers from a “manufacturing defect”. GM has a knack for understatement. That saga began in November with the first of three recalls for software fixes that didn’t. Now they say they will replace the batteries but cannot say when, so owners are not allowed to charge inside overnight and have to leave the cars outside.

The response from companies has been slow. Even flop. Whether they drag their feet to avoid severance payments or get stuck in their bureaucratic labyrinth is an open question. Maybe they’re pushing payments back into the next quarter to make their earnings report look better. And it’s a sad comment in our day and age that their customer service reps don’t reveal their last names (and likely use fictional first names too).

Still, kudos to GM for groundbreaking electric vehicles. For several years it has been clear that the automotive industry is moving in this direction. Instead of jumping onto the galley, early adopters sit in the locomotive and speed down a dark lane to an unknown destination.

Internal combustion engines will soon be a thing of the past. There is no point in fighting progress. Remember the story of Conestoga and Studebaker: Conestoga thought they were in the covered wagon business, and when the automobile reinvented passenger transport, they went bankrupt. Studebaker, the other major covered wagon manufacturer, realized they were in the transportation business and made the leap to the horseless carriage.

Today, as we recognize the threat of global climate change, we must acknowledge the fact that tailpipe emissions of hydrocarbons, which act as greenhouse gases, represent 29% of the total problem.

For the longest time, Big Oil took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook and used everything to distract us and make us look the other way. Those days are coming to an end and now we see the big oil companies struggle to create sustainable energy solutions.

I’ve relegated climate change deniers to the same thought space as Covid deniers: stubborn people who feel a real need to defy conventional thinking, let alone science. That need is only matched by their need to be right.

Our armchair climate “experts” have easily developed into “experts in infectious diseases”. Today we get a little respite because they have swapped hats again and this week they are foreign policy “experts”. Count on them to put a finger to the wind and blow the other way.

The acceptance of electric vehicles will only increase. Cultural iconography will inevitably change. Still, I find it difficult to drive anything other than an Aston Martin with 007.

Aside from saving the planet, we really enjoyed not going to the gas station in 2 1/2 years. I don’t see another new internal combustion engine vehicle in our garage. Plug-in hybrid technology is a good bridge to a fully electric future. Many of us don’t drive more than 50 miles a day, so we can charge up overnight and never go to the gas station again. I am sure that this interim technology will be a great bridge and will eliminate the current “range fear” until battery technology and charging infrastructure catch up.

These cars not only take us in a sustainable direction by significantly reducing greenhouse gases, they are also fun to drive. Like a golf cart on steroids, they accelerate much faster than internal combustion engines, which power anything but a Lamborghini or McLaren F1. Among other benefits, they also introduced the public to “one-pedal driving”, which saves wear and tear and even makes braking work almost unheard of, as the brake pedal is seldom touched as the friction of the engine slows the vehicle down when charging the batteries. But the biggest advantage is that there are significantly fewer moving parts overall that wear out. This also significantly reduces the maintenance effort. No water pump, no alternator, no fuel injection; The only things that move in these vehicles are the jaws when the car hits 60 in 3.5 seconds.

Tell the maintenance guys that you will see them in 100,000 miles.

And tell GM I’m still on hold.

© 2021 Jon Sinton for Progressive Agenda LLC