Environmentalists and foreign oil hawks alike have gnashed teeth over the apparent slow adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), lamenting that “if only people knew [fill in the blank]”, EV sales would quickly surpass those of conventional fossil fuel-powered cars. EV supporters point to the lack of a national charging network, ignoring the fact that you can plug in – though maybe not to a high-amperage socket – nearly anywhere in the US. Build the infrastructure, they claim, and EV sales will take off. Others point to the general slowdown in auto sales brought on by the Great Recession.
There is a current of truth to all of these explanations, but none tell the whole story. I’d like to offer an additional – and I think fundamental – explanation for why EVs are not yet mainstream.