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Published on May 12, 2019 |
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May 12, 2019 by Sponsored Content
By Benoît Michel
Anyone with a healthy mind supports actions to limit the impact of climate change. We can do a lot to improve our climate: sort our waste, reduce our consumption of plastic, install photovoltaic panels, drive electric cars … and what else?
As owners of electric vehicles, fans and enthusiasts, you can do something very simple that, frankly, is not enough done: you can spread the word. Take action to convince your neighbors to move from economy class to cockpit and take control in hand to give Planet Earth 2019 a better chance of avoiding turbulence. As CleanTechnica has repeated countless times, everything on the planet must be converted into electricity, and electricity must be generated from renewable sources and introduced into a globally interconnected "super network". is at hand and converting the global fleet into electricity is an important part of the solution. You can help.
Story of an EV enthusiast
The ease of use of the electric car and its lack of gaseous emissions originally encouraged my interest in electric vehicles in the 1970s when no one was worried about the weather. I was a student in automotive engineering when I caught the EV virus. In those times without the Internet and smartphones, the only way to drive an electric car was to build one yourself. So I did!
The author's own vehicle, taken from his archives
The lack of components made the project fun and complicated. The use of a forklift engine and lead-acid batteries did not make things too exciting. However, given the scarcity of electric cars in the 20th century, I managed to show mine to a wide audience and I may have even convinced some of the "innovators", those who populate the lower corner left of the S curve of the adoption of electric vehicles – seen below.
The curve in S of adoption of VE, taken from the site of the author)
John Goodenough invented the lithium-ion battery in 1980, but it took another twenty years for its price to drop to the point of being able to be used in small devices such as mobile phones, and thirty years to become cheap enough to to make energy. storage solution of choice for cars. So, after my first experiences, I had to wait decades before I could buy an electric car worthy of the name. With all the owners of electric vehicles currently scattered across the planet, we managed to take off the curve in S – I would say that we are now in the phase of "first users"!
As we have long been convinced that electric vehicles are part of climate change, how can we help steer the slope of the curve and enter the "early majority" phase? There is a simple method available to all – again, we must continually spread the word.
Seize all VE awareness opportunities
Family reunions, school parties, concerts, exhibitions, football and basketball games provide many opportunities to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of electric vehicles. The first step is to correct the most common misconceptions. So, more than a third of the population does not know that an EV does not have a gearbox and recharges its batteries when the brakes are activated or collapsed!
And about one in two people do not know that you charge the batteries at home at night, using a simple plug (for more details, see the writings of Carolyn Fortuna. CleanTechnica readers know that this last benefit is actually one of the brightest aspects of electric vehicle ownership. In addition, people seem confused about automakers, models and the cost of current and future electric vehicles.
I think the best way to seduce the skeptics is to discuss the benefits of living with an electric car: silence and simplicity, instant acceleration, low cost of ownership, stop filling at the pump, and much more. And that you would not die from inhaling carbon monoxide if you left the garage door closed.
If you talk to a car enthusiast, a garage mechanic or an engineer, you can explain that there is no clutch, no gearbox, no oil, no silencer. The electric car is so simple that the maintenance comes down to changing the tires and completing the windshield washing. Better still, the life of the EV is at least twice as long as that of an ICE car.
When I wrote my book, The electric car: here and now, I collected the most frequently asked questions and their answers: "It's too expensive!" "It's not really available." "The ranges are too limited." "Charging takes a lot of time." "It does nothing to mitigate warming. "It is full of rare earths and expensive metals. "It is based on scandalous subsidies! "and the popular" Where will all the electricity come from? "I'm sure you already have ready answers for most of these arguments, but I've included a compilation of these Q & As in the last chapter.
The world will be better after the burial; image of the electric car, here and now,
Win with experience: go for a ride
Talk, it's great. strutting is even better. If your interlocutor is almost convinced or very skeptical about electric vehicles, suggest taking a ride in your electric car. Ten minutes will suffice to show him everything you have explained and the memory of the experience will never die!
If you belong to a group of owners of electric vehicles, why not organize mini-events "Discover electric cars" such as those organized by DriveElectricWeek since 2014 – or join me: I organize one in September with friends in Belgium.
If we know how to spread the word, the last latecomers may take the electric train by 2030!
After serving the same arguments dozens of times over countless discussions, I discovered that a good way to get the word out to a lot of people in record time was to put everything in one place. book. That's why I wrote my book, The electric car: here and now– now available on Amazon. In clear and everyday terms, it sums up all the controversies, pros and cons that are heard most often, and answers some questions that VE owners are still questioned:
- Life with an EV must be strange, is not it?
- How it works?
- There are Tesla and the other brands. Which one should I choose?
- Should we wait for hydrogen fuel cells?
- And what about autonomous cars …? And more!
About the author: Benoît Michel is an engineer in electromechanics. After graduating, he built an electric car and various prototypes of electric motors, then a low-energy home well before the "low-power" mode was in fashion. He works for the European Commission and PILAB (Pixel and Interaction Laboratory) at UCLouvain. He co-founded the association "Vent d'ici" for the promotion of renewable energies in Belgium. Through his lectures and his many technical writings, this promoter of popular science shares his passion for new technologies, cars and energy problems with lay people from around the world on his website. and with his new book, available on Amazon. He is organizing a Drive Electric Week event in September 2019 in Belgium.
About the author
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