Not Who – But What – Killed the Electric Car

Sometimes a tag-line generates a mental rant that won’t go away. The electric car is one of those topics. In a corporate world where everyone looks toward the big business culprit behind the failures of innovation, sometimes the death-knell for a good idea is not so glamorous. Take for example, the electric car. Now I know there is a movie about its demise long before it got a chance to live, and no I haven’t seen it, ironically. Why you may ask? Don’t need to. What killed the electric car is plain to me. To coin a real estate term, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. When one looks at it from a straight-forward demographic approach it becomes simple.

Who is the biggest market for the car? Low to moderate income individuals where the offset in electricity to petroleum costs would make the biggest difference and ensure early and enthusiastic adopters. Okay no surprises yet, I know, but bear with me. When you look at this consumer sector there is one thing that stands out that to drive my point home. Of all households, more than 70% of this sector of consumers doesn’t own their home. This means rentals, usually multiple-unit housing (MUH’s) or condominiums. Even the homeowners in the condo sector are often relegated to community based MHU’s. How does that translate to non-viability for owning electric cars?

Just like utilities, telecom or the Internet this is all about having the hook-up to provide you the service you seek. If you own a single family home or driveway/garage equipped condo, you probably have a convenient way to plug in your electric car via your garage or a line ran a few short feet to your driveway or curbside spot. If you live in a MUH, you have no option. Not only do you have no option to hook YOUR car to YOUR electrical outlets. You don’t even have the availability of hooking up your electric car to ANY outlet. Couple this to the fact that there are little or no hookups available in the rest of the world and I think my point is made. So if you want to rail against someone, I suppose you could picket commercial construction contractors and power utilities, but until MUH design and construction becomes electric friendly on a wide scale, or at least available, I’m afraid there’s not much point. Did I say “Damn Those Hard to Implement Paradigm Shifts?” If not, I meant to!