When the GM EV1 was released in 1996, the automotive world took notice. Here was a major manufacturer dipping their toes into the hot lava of electrification, proving that the technology was not out of reach for the everyday consumer. The accolades poured in. Even with a scant 80 miles of range, the car was beloved by its owners. When GM cancelled the program and pulled the EV1 from Saturn dealerships, some owners sent checks directly to GM corporate begging to keep their cars, but GM claimed high production costs and low lease numbers meant the EV1 was an experiment that didn’t pay off. But by then, the proverbial damage was done and the wool was pulled from our eyes. There was no turning back.
The hubbub over electric cars built over the next few years until 2006 when an upstart named Elon Musk took a Lotus chassis, stuck an electric motor in the back and laptop batteries in the center, then sold one to Arnold Schwarzenegger and some silicon valley smart people. It was simple, fast, expensive, and it looked it, so it sold well. And there was much rejoicing.
Fast forward to today and the electric car market is raging like a Sig Ep frat party after graduation. Storied nameplates like Cadillac and Volvo are ditching ICE altogether for electric hardware that keeps getting smaller, cheaper and more efficient every year, and nearly every major car maker in the world has at least one EV either already on the roads or in the pipeline. We have EV race leagues, EV retrofit kits, and an ongoing competition to determine who can design the most complicated hybrid EV/ICE powertrain because marketing campaigns have done a great job at convincing us that hybrid = prestige.
I have no problem with this.
But it’s important to remember something: the electric car is not faultless.
An EV is still a car. It’s still built with mostly the same materials and using the same methods we’ve used to build cars for the last hundred years. The current crop of EVs is designed to fit precisely into the mold we’ve built around ICE cars, so many of the problems we face with cars in general will simply carry over to the new generation. EVs are designed around our current lifestyle, not the one we wish we had.
Estimates show that by 2040, there will be 2 billion cars on the road worldwide, nearly doubling in the next two decades. That’s about one car for every 4 people on the planet. Even if a large percentage of new cars sold in those two decades are EVs, those cars still need tires, batteries, brake pads, steel and aluminium structures, glass, electronics, air conditioning. All those ancillary systems and parts will still be produced using the same methods and materials used for ICE vehicles. Each one of those cars will also need a parking space and room to drive which means more roads and more infrastructure designed around cars.
They are still environmentally hazardous. Anyone that says they’re not isn’t paying attention. Though several new battery technologies are showing promise, the vast majority of current EVs were designed with lithium ion batteries in mind. Li-Ion batteries are unstable, expensive, and difficult to produce, and once they’re dead, disposing of them safely is not easy. Despite the dangers, Li-ion power cells are still the go-to battery for EVs, and the market for their production has skyrocketed. When that much money is waiting to be made, greed will always trump concern for the environment. There are companies currently fighting environmental regulators for access to vast swathes of untouched seabed so they can literally strip mine the ocean floor for nodules of heavy metals needed in battery production.
Car manufacturers are not an altruistic bunch. They won’t spend a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars developing a completely new EV out of the goodness of their hearts. Their feigned concern for the environment is a marketing tactic. They want to sell us consumer goods so they can make a profit, pure and simple. This can be good for the consumer as competition means prices will decrease, but with that decrease in price comes a decrease in value, and lower value means rapid replacement. EVs will be thought of more as consumer electronics than a long term investment. Think of what happened to the iPhone 4 when the 5 came out.
The EV1 may have opened our eyes to what the electric car could be, but it also may have opened Pandora’s box. We’ll have to wait and see.