2nd Thing I’ve Learned From The Tesla–NYTimes Firestorm

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This article has been reposted from EVObsession.

Shower by SweetCapture, some rights reserved. (Yes, this picture is relavant to this article -- read on.)
Shower by SweetCapture, some rights reserved. (Yes, this picture is relavant to this article — read on.)

As I just noted in another article, even I have learned something pretty important from this whole Tesla–NYTimes debacle. But the thing discussed in that article isn’t the only thing I learned from all this. I’ve also learned that it’s a lot easier to get people to focus on what they’re losing than on what they’re gaining.

Or, an alternative to that might be: it’s a lot easier to get people to focus on the negative than on the positive.

Or: it’s a lot easier to convince people to stay stuck in their ways than to be leaders.

The first two points come to mind because of one specific issue that differentiates electric cars from gasoline-powered cars (and the third comes to mind from the first two). That specific issue is convenience.

The general “wisdom” is that gasoline-powered cars are more convenient because you hardly ever have to go more than a few miles to find a gas station. In other words, you don’t have to do much thinking or planning to keep from running out of gas.

However, thinking and planning aren’t equivalent to inconvenience. In fact, if it’s a simple matter, they’re extremely easy things to do. And if you actually develop a habit out of that thinking and planning, things get obsessively convenient.

Much more inconvenient is standing outside in the heat or cold at a dirty gas station and smelling the harmful and disgusting fumes of gasoline (though, I hear that some people actually like the smell… not sure how that came about). With an electric car, you simply don’t have to go through that. You simply plug your car in when you get home and/or when you get to work, and then you unplug it when you leave again. Ridiculously simple. Ridiculously convenient compared to standing at a gas station on a regular basis.

It’s like the convenience of having a shower at home versus having to go to a public shower to wash up every day or two.


 
When it comes to convenience, I think it’s obvious that an electric vehicle wins hands down.

But hey, there’s actually more to the convenience of an electric vehicle versus a gasoline-powered car. Electric motors are a lot simpler than internal combustion engines, and they have a lot fewer moving parts. Basically, with an electric car, you don’t have to get oil changes and you don’t have to deal with all sorts of maintenance issues and replacing of parts that you have to deal with when you own a gasoline-powered car.

So, next time you get into a conversation with someone and they start talking about the “convenience” of a deadly gasmobile versus an electric vehicle, please do everyone a favor and direct them over to this article!


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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7324 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan