Electric cars: Are business conflicts delaying them?

Our hopeful vision of streets full of electric cars is said to be just a few years away from reality. In fact, the environmentally friendly vehicles are already making their presence felt, albeit in a very scattering way. It is said that all big players are charging ahead with prototype and experiment and research and development have been in full swing. GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW all are diving into the still fledgling market and sales have jumped. This, of course, is the good news.

Should we be excited? Or, how optimistic should we be? Analysts believe that, despite all the good signs, the tipping point may come substantially later than expected. The reason why is the old story. Consumers remain very cautious. Of course, so far this year the sales of electric cars have dwarfed the 2012 volumes but, even so, the figures remain minuscule. For example, in the United States, a country with arguably high environmental awareness, of more than 14.4 million cars sold last year, only some 52,000 – one of every 270 cars purchased – were plug-in hybrids or pure electric cars.

Why are consumers reluctant? Again, we are back to the chicken and egg situation which delays, for example, an e-publishing boom in various countries. Cars are more complicated than switching from printed texts to digital content, because they concerns a huge investment by consumers. And car production and how they have traditionally been fuelled form an instrumental part of the global economy, as well as politics. Cars running exclusively on electrical power will drastically change the world as we know it.

Reluctant consumers and two-minded auto-makers have contribute to the slow birth of electric cars. Traditionally fuelled vehicles have contributed to a global economy and political equilibrium that may have become too important to fall. The need to maintain the global status quo may decline, but probably only slowly. The good news includes US President Barack Obama’s apparent push for mass production of electric cars. He set a goal in a 2011 State of the Union address that a million electric cars should be on the road by 2015. Although that goal is looking loftier each day, at least we see political will there. 

 

SALES OF TRADITIONAL VEHICLES SHOWING LITTLE CHANGE 

The bad news is that sales of traditional vehicles have shown no sign of giving way to this alternative. While e-books have outsold conventional books in some markets, electric cars inch their way on to the streets. E-books are cheap, fast to download and convenient to carry around, but electric cars are expensive and have maintenance issues. We can buy a computer tablet, realise our “mistake” and throw it away. Buying a car is a big decision in life, and everyone wants to go for a safe choice. And what is “safer” than the tried and trusted conventional cars?

Consumers will make a quick u-turn if one day they can |power their cars up at home and the vehicles can go as fast as ones fuelled by petrol. It’s a scenario that is bound to happen, because the planet’s natural oil resources cannot last forever. It’s the question of whether the industrial people who have a big say on the future want it to happen now or only when they really run out of options. 

Electric cars are like many other innovations nowadays, whose potential should have been reached faster but for conflicts of interest delaying their mass production. E-publishing has been delayed not as much by consumers’ ambivalence as by key industrial players’ unwillingness to do away with mega investment in printing machines. Smartphones and tablets have been upgraded only little by little because manufacturers want to cash in while they can.

In other words, something is “impossible” not because we can’t do it, but because we won’t do it, at least for now. We humans have conjured up ways to build a car that doesn’t need oil, as well as to generate power from harmless sources. Without a doubt, we have the knowledge and ability to release millions of environmentally friendly vehicles onto the streets, but to many people who “matter”, that’s not economically viable.

Admittedly, there is a lot at stake, not least the global politics and economy, which are already been precariously balanced on what countries have oil and what countries don’t. But the world environment is also at stake here. And while we can recover from |a financial catastrophe or even a world war, the same cannot be said if the global environment reaches a point of being unable to recover.