There are a variety of reasons people like electric cars, and I'm curious what yours are. Feel free to put your top reason for being interested in EVs in the poll and then post about it! I'm mainly interested in EVs for the technology, but I'm also interested in energy independence and being prepared for the future. How did you get interested in EVs and what are the most important factors for you?
I first became attracted to the idea, or the ideal, of the electric car, from articles in Popular Science in the sixties, when I was a teenager. It was the simplicity and efficiency of the electric car which appealed to me. My hope to see the gasmobile become obsolete, and the use of fossil fuels sharply reduced, has only grown in the decades since. I have come to understand the environmental destruction caused by burning irreplaceable fossil fuels for nothing more than providing day-to-day transportation. I have come to realize just how horribly inefficient and wasteful of resources a typical car's engine is; not only the low efficiency of small inexpensive (mild steel or aluminum) heat engines, but all the Rube Goldberg kludges needed to keep the ICEngine from melting, exploding or tearing itself to pieces, and to deal with the waste heat and the noise. Electric cars need none of those wasteful and resource-hogging kludges. No air intake or filter, no exhaust manifold or muffler, no oil, oil filter, or oil pump, no timing chain, no spark plugs or distributor, no fan or fan belt, no fuel pump or filter... I could go on. None of the resources necessary to produce those kludges are needed for an electric car. Then there's the geopolitical matter of how Big Oil and its propaganda is such a strong negative influence on national and regional governments; Big Oil is so profitable that it has obscene amounts of money to use in bribing and lobbying politicians. This has become so prevalent that the line between lobbying and outright bribery has almost completely disappeared. Big Oil money has had a corrosive effect in greatly increasing corruption of public officials. In the USA, Big Oil's propaganda campaign has been so successful that the U.S. uses its military to protect Big Oil interests overseas, and to protect oil tanker shipments to our shores. All of that, at a cost of trillions of dollars, has been and continues to be paid for by the U.S. taxpayer; none of it has been or will be paid for by Big Oil. Even worse, the highest cost of using our military to support Big Oil's international interests isn't in tax dollars, but in the thousands of lives lost and even more blood spilled by our service men and women. Another terrible negative factor in the geopolitics of Big Oil is how money paid for oil is propping up despotic and corrupt regimes in the Mideast and South America. In summary, my reasons for being an EV advocate are far too many to fit into a simple survey where only a single response is possible.
I'd say my initial impetus to learn more about EVs was environmental, spurred on by that crazy 2005 hurricane season. That summer really brought the seriousness of climate change (global warming) into sharp view. Add to that the myriad negative consequences of having your transportation energy exposed to the whims of entities (oil companies, cartels, and governments) that may not have our best interests in mind. First, I looked at bio-fuels as a possible answer, but there were far too many environmental/political/practical problems with that. After learning about lithium batteries and their potential to improve, electric propulsion began to look like the best, most viable alternative. Since then, electric vehicle technology has improved considerably, and I'm happy to see the industry headed where I thought it might so many years ago. Anyway, now, my interest in EVs has as much to do with the excitement of watching a historic paradigm shift happen as much as anything. It's amazing to see just how fast the technology is advancing. There is a lot of room for almost every aspect of EVs to improve, so this show should last a while.
