I find it interesting that people say that the Electric Vehicle (EV) will never become the norm. They cite how the GM EV1 failed miserably. Not if you ask it’s owners. Sorry, lessors. GM leased them and when the lease was up recalled every one and then crushed them despite the outcry from the people who had them.

With GM abandoning the EV enter Toyota. Toyota gave us the Prius. A car that turned out to be pretty popular but a hybrid. A part battery driven and part Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) powered. Actually mostly ICE driven. The battery doesn’t have much capacity, while it does get pretty good gas milage it runs on gas about 80% of the time unless you drive really short distances at really slow speeds.

Then Tesla Motors and Elon Musk decided to prove the concept that an all Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) could be a reality. They built a sporty, fun and really fast car that could go over 200 miles on a charge. The Tesla Roadster. Not everybody could buy one at $100k plus but Tesla sold over 2400 of them.

Musk has said that he wasn’t sure if he would make money selling Tesla’s but the idea was to spur other car makers on to build BEV’s.

It worked. Next to enter the game was Nissan with the Nissan Leaf. The LEAF was a big gamble for Carlos Ghosn. While in my opinion the Leaf is not that pretty and not worth the current price tag if you want to go all electric and are willing to spend about $22k for an S Model after the $7500 Federal Tax break you could do worse For a while you could lease a top of the line Model SL for less than $200 a month. That was a smoking deal. I know two people who who got one and one still has his past the lease end and Nissan is still taking his payments at that price. He is also leasing a Rav4 EV. The other person turned his in and is now leasing a Toyota Rav4 EV as well

Now Tesla not wanting to stop at proof of concept developed the Tesla Model S. The Tesla S is the ectomorph of the auto world. Lean and hot. Can go miles on little energy but highly demanded by Alpha Males and comes at a really high price.

Tesla is no working on a Model X but they should probably call it the DD. It going to have a larger capacity to carry more passengers and cargo. The Sexy SUV.

Anyway I digress.

Another entry into the EV market with another concept is the Chevrolet Volt. Not really a hybrid and not really a full blown BEV. It’s pretty confusing to the mere mortal how it works but the engine pretty much runs of electricity that is provided by a battery or fuel powering a generator.  Sort of like how a GM Electromotive Diesel Locomotive runs. The big advantage of the Volt over the standard Prius type hybrid engine is that you can charge the batteries by plugging in the vehicle and the “generator” won’t run until the battery charge runs down to a certain level of charge. This means you will not burn fuel at all if you drive less than 38 or so miles before recharging your batteries. Then if you can’t charge or don’t have time to charge the engine starts and generates power to keep enough electricity in the batteries to run the engine.

This is not really new technology here. Over the past 100 years or so oil has been plentiful and comparatively cheap. As long as you don’t put a cost on pollution or damage to the land.

So now we have multiple technologies that provide efficient and clean transportation why do we have so few choices.

For years the Prius was the “Green” car of choice. Not sexy and not cool or fun to drive. Not much of a choice. Until recently. Kia, Ford and even Honda have gotten into the hybrid game. And people are buying them. Not in huge numbers but you see more and more every day.

Since the Tesla came out there have been more BEV’s to choose from as well. Not just the Leaf but now we have cars from Kia (Soul EV), VW (E-Golf) and BMW (i3) just to name a few. Actually there are over 10 pure BEV’s out there now and just as many hybrids.

And I’m saving Ford for last. Ford has sort of had a different approach. Ford has the Fusion Hybrid, much like the Prius and they also have Plug In Hybrids like the Prius Plug In. They allow you to drive a few miles on pure battery power before the gas engine kicks in and drives the wheels. Still not enough miles to run most the average drivers day all electric. It’s the really safe route to dip your toes into the electric vehicle market. In my opinion a waste of resources.

Then Ford has the Focus Electric. An all electric vehicle. Actually one of the nicer ones at a reasonable price. The one I bought. So I guess I have a bias, but a very carefully thought out bias.

That’s why I’m picking the Voltec engine in the Chevy Volt and the pure BEV’s like the Tesla,  Leaf, Ford Focus to win. Hybrids and Plug in Hybrids are just the gateway drug.

But here are the current problems. Most of the pure BEV’s are either compliance vehicles sold in only a handful of States and produced in limited numbers. The Leaf is a car with a body only a very few will find attractive. The Tesla is for the top 5% on the economic ladder. That leaves the Volt. GM tried selling the Volt Tech to Cadillac Buyers. And they tried to charge $75k for it.

People who can afford an Escalade are not going to buy an EV especially a Cadillac EV. They are going to buy an Escalade. They could care less about the cost of gas or the environment.

The rest of the Cadillac customer base doesn’t know why the radio has more choices than AM stations. And the new Corvette is so much cooler. So please GM, don’t take your mistake as a given that people don’t want EV’s. The Volt would have sold much more if you had 5 seat belts even if the car doesn’t really fit 5 people. Uber won’t approve a car with less 5 seats. Neither will a Taxicab Company. Have you seen how many cabs and Uber’s are Pri-i? It will also help if you offered a model that doesn’t win CNET’s tech awards. Offer a cheap trim as well as a maxed out model. Look to how Apple markets iPhones.

For those of you that are still naysayers. Look in your pocket or on the console in front of you. 30 years ago that cellphone was so big 5 pounds of it was in your trunk and only the handset was in the passenger compartment.  It cost $1500 and about $100 a month for 30 minutes of airtime. I know because I had one in my super cool 1986 MR2. I remember telling a girlfriend that she could wait till later that evening to bitch at me cause what she had to say was’t important enough to pay a dollar a minute for.

Then just a few years later I had one of those big Motorola Bricks that you could carry around with you and look really cool. You know the one. That phone that probably gave a whole generation brain cancer. Later followed by the Flip and then the Razor only to see an iPhone or Droid in most everybody’s pocket. Even people who by Cadillacs.

What we are not seeing is a Sat Phone in everybody’s pocket. That is where Toyota and Honda are going to end up with a Hydrogen vehicle. The infrastructure that needs to be built is about as expensive as sending things into space.

Investors and car manufacture, don’t get caught with your pants down like the local phone companies. Yes, there will be a few people who still want an ICE car just like a few people still hang on to their landline. But they will be very few. It will be a lot cheaper for gas stations to add Superchargers than Hydrogen tanks. If nothing else people will still stop for a Big Gulp and 2 hot dogs for a dollar.

Maybe the Post Office should install Supercharges. Elon? A new partnership maybe. I hear email has hurt their business.

The electric utilities are already trying to make solar less attractive. Join the party. Don’t fight it. But that’s another 1500 words.