Electric car naysayers are sadly misinformed about EV potential
Friday, March 25th, 2011
My Clean Break column is a defense of electric vehicles, which are often dissed by auto reviewers who can’t wrap their heads around a world not dominated by noisy, smelly, polluting vehicles. Yes, the internal combustion engine can become and is becoming more efficient. Yes, the internal combustion engine will be here for decades to come. But electric vehicles, despite the pronouncements of some skeptics, will not be dead on arrival. What these folks fail to take into account is that many of the problems associated right now with electric vehicles are likely to be overcome within the next 10 or 20 years as the rate of adoption begins to pick up. The amount of innovation going on in this area is unprecedented, and the benefits will become clear enough by 2020. Nobody is claiming electric vehicles will completely take over. Nobody is saying the adoption of electric cars will be quick. But electric cars are coming – get used to it – and the world will be a better place for it.
It’s time to stop stubbornly clinging to the past.
Tyler Hamilton is associate publisher and editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and former business columnist for the Toronto Star. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005.
