Yesterday, as we drove to the DuPont State Forest from Asheville, North Carolina, with a thousand other motorists, I wondered: “When is the electric renaissance going to come?” An RV chugged by my window, driving faster than me. Admittedly, I was coasting slowly, enjoying the scenic view. But how much better off would the old fella and his wife in that RV be if their RV was electric? If they could charge it when pulled in to the RV park tonight, and treat themselves to a nice dinner or an extra convenience, instead of dumping hundreds of dollars into their fuel tank?
How much better off would we all be?
There’s no conceivable reason we can’t all be driving electric cars in the next decade or two, if the movement were to reach the tipping point soon. The only thing really holding me back from trading my Jeep in for a Tesla, for example, is the prohibitive cost of it. (I’d go with a different one, but the Volt is $40 grand and have you seen the thing? Yuck.)
Entrepreneurs have the technology available to them, thanks in large part to Elon Musk’s recent announce that Tesla is open sourcing all their patents (with the best title, “All Our Patent Are Belong To You.”) so the only thing holding us back, as Musk points out, is “the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.”
But not just cars, Elon! RVs, eighteen wheelers, and freight vehicles, tractors and backhoes, pickups and Jeep Wranglers and Hummers and motorcycles.
You’re thinking too small! This could be the electric renaissance, man.
The United States has thousands of motorists touring from coast to coast every day. Doing the parks, living the nomadic life. Not to mention all those 9-5 New York commuters who could really use the extra $5-6k/year they spend on gasoline to get to and from work each week for something else.
This country is ready for it, if someone would just give us a chance.
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