The Future of the eCar

Today, in the wake of the international car show (IAA) in Frankfurt,  I saw a report on TV by the science magazine “nano” about the state of affairs concerning the eCar development in Europe. It annoyed the hell out of me that the entire 30 minutes of the show had a dismissive undertone to it. You walked away with the feeling that eCars are not to be taken seriously.

It may be true that mass market eCars are not there yet, but I think it’s a mistake to ignore the developments surrounding them. The eCar will be (as a lot of things nowadays) a revolution from the bottom up and so we need to start taking on our role as educated buyers.

According to the internet (and even nano), mass-market eCars are on their way. From Nissan in late 2010 to Renault in 2016, with Audi, BMW and Volkswagen somewhere in between, every large car manufacturer seems to be set to bring us mass-market eCars. What also varies is the volume they intend to deliver, ranging from 30.000 to 100.000 per year. So, depending on how well they sell, this means a quarter million and upwards in eCars pY in a few years.

To put this in perspective: This august, Germany started an initiative with the goal of 1 million eCars on their streets by 2020. Taking into account the current number of cars, as well as the average annual growth rate, this will mean somewhere between 1-2% of all cars in Germany by then. That won’t have any effect on our environment.

The eCar is a tremendous chance to make personal transportation even more affordable, and yet more importantly, we can accomplish this in a way which preserves natural resources and is sustainable, as well as upscaleable far into the future

Shai Agassi put it quite aptly in his TED-Talk:

“We have to make the right moral decision. We have to make it immediately. We need to do it not within 20 years, or 50 years, but within this presidential term. Because if we don’t, we will loose our economy right after we lost our morality.”

Better Place, Shai Agassi’s company, not only offers a solution on how to quickly facilitate the global transition to eCars, but also successful realizes it. They already announced cooperations with Israel, Hawaii, Australia, Denmark, Ontario/Canada, the SF Bay Area and Tokyo. Israel and Hawaii plan to completely switch to eCars in the foreseeable future. Australia, Denmark, Ontario and the Bay Area will build up the infrastructure and through tax subsidization make eCars almost 60% cheaper the conventional cars. Tokyo will switch it’s entire taxi fleet to eCars. There are more to come, but what is already in motion accounts for almost 3-4x as much cars as the German initiative aims for.

In his speech, Shai Agassi even alluded that with mass adoption and technological advances, it is assumed that eCars will cost 2¢ a mile in 2020. Today, if we took the most eco-friendly car and the cheap american gas prices, we would still be at 3,4¢ a mile. So, in the next few years, eCars will cost a fraction of normal cars and power costs will be similar to now. The more people switch to this, the cheaper it will get for all of us, and the faster the infrastructure will be as convenient as it is now.

So, even in times of economic crisis this is a call to every single human being who feels even slightly like an early adopter to go out and buy an eCar as soon as possible. Because, you know: Yes, we can.