On the heels of a discussion with Max about my skepticism about the electrical motoring revolution, the Economist has published a fantastic briefing which brought me up to speed on some of the particulars.

My criticisms (which are largely addressed in the article about), are as follows:

Car makers are assuming ~65km (~36 miles) is enough to cover "most" use cases for driving per charge. The Economist points out that 80% of use cases are covered - but that seems oddly wrong to me. A drive to La Jolla for me is roughly 13 miles. That means a trip there and back is going to utilize 3/4 of my battery power (excluding a range extender). Factor in traffic, and running errands, and local traffic (finding parking), do I really feel safe with an electric? In any case, the last 20% of the use cases are what is important to me - the drives to Vegas or LA - what do electric drivers do then? (The Economist proposes multiple solutions)

Given the limited range, electric cars are being built for city people. I'm curious to know what class of city people are buying these cars, though. If you live in a city, you most likely park in a garage. If you're unfortunate like me, you are paying a third party for parking. Even if you had your own spot in your garage, will the infrastructure exist to allow for charging?

The argument that you pay less for electricity because it's "off-peak" hours is ridiculous. Start plugging in hundreds of thousands of cars into the electricity grid, and we'll see how long that argument holds.

The Economist utilizes the story of digital cameras to sell the car story. The story being: digital cameras were, at first, more expensive and had less resolution; but in time, they got cheaper and more effective. The article tries to draw a similar conclusion with cars, but I don't think it'll hold. Digital cameras lack of quality actually was actually a net-plus when they first came out. Remember back in 2000/2001, broadband still hadn't completely penetrated the US market. Having smaller image sizes was actually a benefit.

The pricing/resolution argument is a bit bunk as well. Most consumers only need to print, at largest, 8x10 prints. That is a 3.9 megapixel camera, which have always been within reach. I remember my first camera, the Fuji Finepix 6900 was one of the first cameras to break that 3 megapixel barrier, and it was about $400. $400 for a bleeding edge camera is not the same as a $40,000+ investment into a car.

Digital cameras also had the killer application: instant gratification. They were also much cheaper than film cameras (film + printing + time) - digital cameras really came in and disrupted the market rather rapidly, because they offered consumers a superior product at a cheaper price.

I'm not so sure about that on electrics. What is the killer app of electrics? The acceleration? Saving the world? Even the hybrid adoption (with government subsidies to soften the blow of the additional costs) has been lower than I imagined - this report says hybrid sales will cross 1 million mark in 2012 (not sure if that's per year or total). That seems remarkarably low, especially if average passenger car sales in the US come out to be about 8 million.

So with electrics, I get a crapper version of a car (anytime there's a risk I can get stranded, that's pretty crappy - and like my point above, it seems I'd get stranded often) at a higher price point with no clear benefit.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster. But hey, that's me ... what do I know?

(I will say that one of my favorite parts of Bald Head Island in NC is the fact that you take a ferry over to the island, and can only get around on electric golf carts. I LOVE the concept and knowing that it's being efficient makes me feel good - but the island is designed for that purpose. I do hope that this becomes a trend, but I don't think it's going to happen from the auto industry - it will require retrenching the American living/shopping mindset away from suburbs, downtowns, and shopping areas.)