Why Are EVs Trying to Imitate Gasoline Cars?
The Meaning of “Next Generation” and the Power of Framing
Cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays were replaced by LCD screens, and feature phones gave way to smartphones.
In some respects, the older technologies were actually superior, whether in response times or battery life.
Yet LCD screens became the next generation through lower costs and larger displays, while smartphones did so by offering a wide range of functions.
But perhaps electric vehicles (EVs) cannot turn gasoline-powered cars into an obsolete generation.
And perhaps the reason lies in how we define the problem in the first place.
That is the subject of this essay.
The Limited Appeal of EVs
What characteristics come to mind when you think of electric vehicles?
Environmental benefits, energy efficiency, quiet operation, rapid acceleration, fewer mechanical components, luxury…
Or perhaps:
Long charging times, limited driving range, the need for charging infrastructure, reduced performance in cold weather…
Having both advantages and disadvantages is nothing unusual. Technologies that eventually became the next generation had their own trade-offs.
But environmental performance and quiet operation are not necessarily compelling selling points for most consumers.
EVs may cost less to operate, but their purchase prices are often higher.
And not everyone considers acceleration particularly important.
For people whose living conditions and driving habits are well suited to EVs, they may already be the best choice.
But that does not make them the most rational choice for everyone.
If LCD monitors had offered roughly half the price and half the weight of CRT monitors, almost everyone would have benefited.
EVs do not offer such universal advantages.
Nor have they introduced a fundamentally new product category, as smartphones did by becoming portable, multifunctional devices.
For many consumers, EVs still lack a decisive advantage.
If governments and suppliers did not exert pressure on the market, and consumers remained free to choose either technology, EVs might continue expanding their market share in certain regions.
But rather than becoming the next generation in the way LCD screens and smartphones did, they might remain just another option.
What they lack is a benefit that applies to almost everyone — or an appeal that competing technologies cannot replicate.
A substantial number of people can simultaneously believe:
“EVs are better.”
And:
“Gasoline or hybrid vehicles suit my needs better.”
That suggests demand may eventually reach a ceiling before EVs can completely transform the market.
But perhaps the reason is that EVs themselves remain trapped in conventional assumptions about what a car should be.
Does “Car” Mean “Gasoline Car”?
Gasoline-powered automobiles have more than a century of history.
The shape, functions, and uses of modern cars were established over that long period.
Laws, urban planning, public perceptions, and even pedestrian behavior have all developed around gasoline-powered vehicles.
Perhaps today’s EVs are trying to figure out how to fit onto the tracks laid down by gasoline cars — and then outperform them on those same tracks.
That is a difficult challenge.
Is building massive charging infrastructure to make charging times resemble refueling times really the optimal solution?
What about installing increasingly large and heavy batteries to extend driving range?
It is perfectly natural for consumers comparing products to expect EVs to offer the same capabilities as gasoline cars.
But it is not necessarily natural to demand identical characteristics from fundamentally different technologies.
We do not normally call a sprinter’s inability to run long distances a defect.
It only appears to be a defect when we judge the sprinter by the standards of long-distance running.
Likewise, evaluating EVs solely by whether they improve upon or fall short of gasoline cars may prevent us from realizing their full potential.
Are long driving ranges and short refueling times truly essential characteristics of automobiles?
Are luxurious interiors, conventional body shapes, and familiar patterns of ownership and use really optimal for electric vehicles?
Put differently:
If gasoline cars had never existed, wouldn’t EVs have developed into something entirely different?
Their shapes, mechanisms, and even our expectations about how vehicles should be used might have evolved in completely different directions.
This is more than a matter of first-mover advantage.
Perhaps EVs are constrained by the very concept of the automobile that gasoline-powered vehicles established.
And perhaps that constraint is holding back their development.
This time, let’s try solving the problem by changing its framing.
A Different Path to Success for EVs
Today’s EV manufacturers generally aim to replace gasoline cars and become automobile manufacturers themselves.
But perhaps they have unconsciously accepted the definition of the problem without choosing it.
They begin with the assumption that “a car is supposed to be like this,” and then struggle unnecessarily to satisfy it.
The real question is:
Are the things we currently expect from cars actually necessary?
For example, what if we created a society in which cars were not something people owned?
Today, we strongly associate automobiles with personal ownership.
That encourages manufacturers to create all-purpose vehicles equipped with a wide range of functions.
Because people travel different distances for different purposes, a single vehicle is expected to handle almost everything.
But if we remove that requirement, many of the disadvantages associated with EVs could disappear from the consumer’s experience.
Suppose someone needs to travel 300 kilometers.
There is no reason one vehicle must complete the entire journey on a single charge.
If the passenger can transfer to another vehicle after 150 kilometers, a driving range of around 200 kilometers may be perfectly sufficient.
Of course, transferring between vehicles introduces inconvenience and other costs.
But those problems may be easier to solve than making every EV match the driving range of a gasoline car.
This resembles changing trains.
We do not own the train cars.
We pay for transportation services.
The same principle could apply to automobiles.
Instead of owning a car, we pay to travel from Point A to Point B.
Autonomous driving still faces significant technological and legal obstacles, but once those are overcome, it could make this model even more attractive.
Imagine booking a trip from home.
At the scheduled time, a vehicle arrives to pick you up.
If you are traveling with a large group, it might be a van.
If only one or two people are traveling, a much smaller vehicle might arrive.
For longer journeys, another vehicle could already be waiting at an intermediate location.
Passengers simply transfer to the waiting vehicle.
Upon reaching the destination, they leave the vehicle behind.
The vehicle then returns to a depot for charging and cleaning.
Get Wild Philosopher’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Perhaps customers could subscribe to such a service for $300 or $400 per month, with the ability to begin a journey from almost anywhere.
Under this model, homes would not need charging facilities.
They would not even need parking spaces.
Residential areas and city streets would require only places where vehicles could stop to pick up and drop off passengers.
Rather than building EVs that imitate gasoline cars, we should be able to develop ways of using vehicles that are better suited to electric propulsion.
The resulting concept of an automobile might look very different from today’s.
But it could offer consumers something far more valuable.
An Integrated Urban Transportation System
This ambitious model would produce several interesting consequences.
1. Gasoline Cars Would Not Disappear
Consider winter, when cold temperatures reduce EV performance.
We could address this by requiring passengers to transfer between vehicles more frequently.
But why not simply provide gasoline-powered vehicles when they are better suited to the conditions?
In other words, EVs would still be one option among several.
The important thing would no longer be the vehicle’s powertrain.
It would be choosing the most suitable vehicle for each journey.
Sometimes that might be a train.
For a large group, it might be a bus.
The question would no longer be what kind of vehicle we should use, but what transportation method best serves the journey.
2. Selling More Cars Would No Longer Be the Goal
In today’s automobile industry, sales volume is a central measure of success.
That makes perfect sense for companies whose business is manufacturing and selling cars.
But the situation changes when a company sells transportation services instead.
Suppose a company can provide the same transportation capacity with 900,000 vehicles rather than one million.
From the perspective of a transportation service provider, that is a success.
If fewer vehicles can provide greater mobility, the system has become more efficient and potentially more environmentally sustainable.
Society would prioritize transportation efficiency over automobile sales.
Even when the underlying technology remains the same, the objectives can change dramatically depending on how a company defines its services and revenue model.
3. Vehicles Would Lose Much of Their Individuality
Standardized components are enormously valuable in railway cars and aircraft.
They simplify maintenance and can extend the useful lives of vehicles.
In an integrated transportation system, much of the product differentiation pursued by today’s EV manufacturers could become irrelevant.
Large display panels and luxurious sound systems do not necessarily provide universal value.
Instead, EVs might be expected to offer similar shapes, performance, and ride quality regardless of which company manufactured them.
Special luxury vehicles would probably still exist, but they would not define the mainstream.
EVs could be freed from the obligation to compete on driving range, charging speed, and luxury equipment.
4. What We Need Is a “Post-Amtrak”
Companies such as Tesla and BYD are primarily vehicle manufacturers.
But the integrated urban transportation system proposed here would require something closer to a transportation service operator such as Amtrak.
In the railway industry, manufacturers such as Siemens Mobility and Alstom build the trains.
But they are not necessarily the organizations that design timetables, establish fares, and operate transportation services.
For an integrated transportation system, the central player would be the company that coordinates and operates the entire network.
And such a comprehensive operator does not yet exist at the scale envisioned here.
Some companies around the world have begun developing parts of this model.
But none has yet reached the point of coordinating an entire transportation network with the operational precision expected of a railway system.
In that sense, perhaps the greatest obstacle to integrated urban transportation is not autonomous driving technology.
It may be that the company capable of operating the system has not yet emerged.
Such a system would require an enormous organization capable of securing cooperation across industries, even when its objectives conflict with those of the established automobile industry.
Without that kind of central operator, the model could not function.
Can We Redefine What Success Means?
Of course, there is no guaranteed path to success for EVs.
And even if successful strategies exist, there is probably more than one.
The important point of this essay is not:
“This is how EVs will win.”
Nor is it:
“EVs cannot succeed unless they follow this model.”
The point is that success can be defined in many different ways.
When we insist that something must work in a particular way, we unnecessarily narrow our own definition of success.
Sometimes a problem becomes easier to solve when we return to its fundamental purpose.
For example:
Perhaps what people actually need is not cars, but mobility.
Yet the range of possible solutions is often restricted by seemingly innocent choices of language.
When we begin a discussion with “EVs need to…” or “The automobile industry must…,” we have already limited the framing of success.
Those expressions naturally lead us to compare electric vehicles with gasoline-powered vehicles.
We begin with an opposition that has already become fixed in our thinking.
But removing EVs from the center of the question may actually expand the possibilities for using them effectively.
That is the alternative path to success I want to explore.
Of course, changing the framing does not guarantee that every problem disappears.
Existing problems may vanish, only to be replaced by new ones.
If the integrated urban transportation system proposed here became reality, it would undoubtedly create challenges that do not exist today.
Would enough vehicles be available?
Would their quality be adequate?
Could vehicles arrive on schedule?
Would transfers and other procedures create excessive inconvenience?
The mere existence of new problems is not what matters.
What matters is whether those problems are easier to solve than the original challenge of making EVs behave like gasoline cars.
If reframing a problem makes its obstacles more manageable while creating greater value, then the new framing is worthwhile.
If the new problems prove even more difficult, we may need to reframe the issue again.
When EVs truly succeed, it may not be because they have completely replaced gasoline cars.
It may be because they provide something so valuable that the comparison itself becomes unnecessary.
As long as a technology is trying to win by its competitor’s standards, it cannot truly become the next generation.
LCD screens were not simply thinner CRT monitors.
Smartphones were not merely more powerful feature phones.
And if EVs are to become the next generation, they should not simply be more advanced imitations of gasoline-powered cars.
After all, we call something the next generation precisely because it is more than an extension of the current one.
