According to the January issue of Consumer Reports, owners of electrical vehicles (EVs) had 80% more problems than owners of gasoline-powered cars (“Who makes probably the most reliable cars?“). Recent headlines have reported increasing complaints from owners about reliability, limited charging stations and other issues unique to electric vehicles. Sales are strong, but not as strong as a year or two ago.
All of this has led some industry observers to conclude that electric vehicles are a failed technology that, like many other overhyped innovations, is doomed to disappear. Are electric vehicles the new 3D TVs?
We believe reports of the decline of electric vehicles are greatly exaggerated. The complaints may be legitimate, but we must keep them in perspective. Electric vehicles have been around for a long time, but they are not mass-produced. Electric vehicle sales topped 1 million for the first time in 2023 (up from just 320,000 in 2020). That's impressive, but it's pretty much where the internal combustion engine car was in 1913 – before what we now call the age of the automobile.
The cars from 1913 were also not without complaints. They were unreliable, slow, uncomfortable, and generally only available in one color. The country's first drive-up gas station just opened in Pittsburgh. Repair shops were hard to find, as were paved roads.
In 1913, you could add windshield wipers and headlights to your car, but not a radio, air conditioning, or power steering, all of which were still more than a decade away.
In 1913, automobiles simply were not a mature technology. If you were rich they worked reasonably well, but mass production of private cars was still in its infancy. American society also lacked the infrastructure and support systems that a car-based society would require. But within 20 years, the automobile had completely transformed American society.
Like conventional cars in 1913, electric vehicles in 2024 are not yet fully developed, but are developing rapidly. We're seeing improvements in all areas of concern, from reliability to loading times to increased range. There is no reason to believe that these positive trends will not continue.
Just as America needed the federal government to pave the country's roads in the 1910s, today our government must play a role in building the infrastructure needed to accommodate the next million electric vehicles. We need more – and faster – charging stations. We need a stronger power grid and more research for better and cheaper batteries. We also need a network of repair shops and scrap yards that can handle and recycle electric vehicle components. Some of these needs have been addressed in legislation, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, but further help will be needed.
The process we go through with electric vehicles is not fundamentally different from the process we went through with cars, televisions, computers and cell phones. New technologies take time to mature. Society needs time to adapt to these new technologies. And the government has the task of promoting both.
Change takes time, but America's technology innovators expect electric vehicles to achieve their full potential: reducing carbon emissions while revolutionizing both automotive technology and American society.
Tom Coughlin is president of the technical skilled organization IEEE. Keith Moore is President of IEEE-USA.
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