I know it's inevitable the price of a gallon of regular gasoline will rise above $5 and stay there.
Especially true here in Lovely LA, Home of the Automobile as Life Partner, where if they could wire us physically into our beloved vehicles we'd be ecstatic.
We are an audience made captive by our State's isolationist fuel and emissions policies, but we wouldn't want it any other way. Hey, we need to breathe!
And when that 5 buck a pop fuel becomes an everyday reality, the door will begin to close on the standard combustion engine, at least when employed as the motive force for basic transportation. Driving (or riding a motorcycle) for Entertainment will continue introducing combustable Dino-Goo to Oxygen in the presence of Fire for some time to come, but for commuting and just gettin' around drudgery, electric will be our future. And I mean pure electric, not hybrids like the Prius, or even the Volt. In our 5 dollar per G future, any burning of fossil fuel for anything other than Fun will be a non-starter. We won't want anything that uses even a drop of oil.
Good Thing Then, that Los Angeles, almost like no other city, makes sense for electrics. We have plenty of year-round sun to feed solar panels, which in turn can charge up our eCars and eBikes. We also have lots of bumper-to-bumper traffic, and all that idling of gas engines is nastily bad for our collective lungs. Electric fumes are by contrast a non-item, a figment of imagination, and totally nonexistent.
There are only three things keeping electric transportation as the norm from happening:
Range - It takes a lot of miles to get where you want to go in LA, so 60 miles or so on a charge won't cut it. We might settle for a reliable 100 (I said, Might).
Utility - Have you seen current electric vehicles? Space is compromised to make room for batteries. You can't carry many people or much stuff. In LA we drive solo most of the time, but we feel the need to pack in our friends from time to time, and we don't want to leave anyone out to walk. We also must have room to bring those garage sale gems home from the Weekend rounds - can you fit a nice Chair find (or two) in a Leaf?
Cost - We want range and we want utility, but we don't want to pay much more than we would for a gas-powered ride. La-La Landers will pay for the privilege to wean ourselves from oil, but we are a city of all economic strata, and there are limits to how much cost we can handle. Make a compact non-Farkled eCar cost no more than a Fiat 500, and we will pay attention (as long as range and utility have been assured).
A Future Wherein Most Vehicles whistle about electrically across the Land is only a matter of Years Away. No more than a decade, I'd wager.
Maybe Sooner here in La-La Land ...
Good Thing Then, that Los Angeles, almost like no other city, makes sense for electrics. We have plenty of year-round sun to feed solar panels, which in turn can charge up our eCars and eBikes. We also have lots of bumper-to-bumper traffic, and all that idling of gas engines is nastily bad for our collective lungs. Electric fumes are by contrast a non-item, a figment of imagination, and totally nonexistent.
There are only three things keeping electric transportation as the norm from happening:
Range - It takes a lot of miles to get where you want to go in LA, so 60 miles or so on a charge won't cut it. We might settle for a reliable 100 (I said, Might).
Utility - Have you seen current electric vehicles? Space is compromised to make room for batteries. You can't carry many people or much stuff. In LA we drive solo most of the time, but we feel the need to pack in our friends from time to time, and we don't want to leave anyone out to walk. We also must have room to bring those garage sale gems home from the Weekend rounds - can you fit a nice Chair find (or two) in a Leaf?
Cost - We want range and we want utility, but we don't want to pay much more than we would for a gas-powered ride. La-La Landers will pay for the privilege to wean ourselves from oil, but we are a city of all economic strata, and there are limits to how much cost we can handle. Make a compact non-Farkled eCar cost no more than a Fiat 500, and we will pay attention (as long as range and utility have been assured).
A Future Wherein Most Vehicles whistle about electrically across the Land is only a matter of Years Away. No more than a decade, I'd wager.
Maybe Sooner here in La-La Land ...
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