Today’s epiphany; people who are looking forward to electric cars hate automobiles. Who would hate automobiles you may say, first off those who percieve automobiles to be a necessarily evil, first and foremost. That would be followed by those who hate the sound of automobiles and aren’t too estatic about the maintenance either.

Too often the maintenance of an automobile isn’t so much the price of paying someone to do it for you than it is the waiting. Your average person should be able to maintain the vehicle, given as old as automotive technology is in general, but your average person won’t. In fact automobiles are like a house, where anywhere from 1/5 to half of your cost over and above the original price of the acquisition is in the maintenance, the repairs. Bought your car on the cheap for $500? Expect to pay another $100 to $250 in maintaining or repairing that vehicle, at the least.

If only; in the real world that 1/5 to 1/2 tends to be whatever the cost of that vehicle was new. So someone getting a $20,000 vehicle for like $500 after some other unfortunate individual paid it off is still going to pony up a good $4,000 or more in repairs and maintenance during the short time they own it. They may not do so willing, and may nickle and dime the vehicle over those ten years or so they own that car, but it probably does need that amount of money put into it for some mechanic to keep it running right.

Of course I am talking about extreme cases, like someone having to have the engine or transmission replaced, to really hit 1/5 of the retail cost of the vehicle during their tenure, but it can and often does happen.  So people think that electric cars are going to solve a lot of their problems, initially electric cars will offer some advantages; clean running vehicles with little to zero emissions, only the oil that is absolutely needed to keep the engine running, if any at all, and so on and so forth. 

But they will also incur costs in other ways; sophisticated electronics and expensive batteries to maintain.  Not to mention having to pay for that car to find creative ways not to have to rely on the power grid, such as being able to generate electricity through solar.  Some people will sit down with a calculator and do a cost benefit analysis and determine that at any price an electric car will save them money. 

But those who want that instant power that petroleum provides; going from 0 to 60 in seconds, and the perception of a vehicle being powerful, a loud engine or an overpowered one, may never really, truly accept the electric car.  So one has to redefine their thoughts about automobiles and allow them to evolve to really wrap their mind around the electric car.  Imagine this, loud Harley Davidson motorcycles could be a thing of the past, as may the illegal street racing and other facets of automobile culture. 

In general, automobiles would be less masculine and a bit, well, girly.  Worst off automobiles would turn into a techie type of thing, which is sort of where they have been approaching slowly for some time anyway but this would really propel it into digital neverland.   These aren’t necessarily bad things, but a sign of things to come.  The fact that the big 3 seem to be devoted to ramping up hybrid production suggest that American car culture may finally be turning a corner.  Hybrids will inevitably lead to outright electric cars once the technology to go all electric matures and becomes feasible for profitability on a large scale. 

It’s like your grandfathers analog technology.  We’re no longer going to “rig” analog technology to give the appearance of something being digital, like we did with VCRs and television sets with tuners that used digital technology to fine tune what was essentially an analog station, no this is more like digital audio tape, we’re going all out.  This isn’t laserdisc, no this is truly digital.  We’re not turning back either.  Can we do it slowly enough for people to wrap their minds around the idea and learn to embrace and accept these new technologies; quite honestly at this point in the game we don’t have any other choice …