Electric
vehicles are on the verge of disrupting energy markets.
Back
in 1898, New York City hosted a global environmental summit. Flummoxed, the
assembled experts disbanded early without agreeing on workable solutions.
Fast-growing
cities were propelling travel via horse-drawn buggies and wagons to
unprecedented and unsustainable levels. Staggering quantities of equine manure
and urine made urban life hazardous and stinky, Clemson University assistant
professor Eric Morris explains in his colorful essay From Horse Power to Horsepower.
Within 20 years, the primary transportation mode since the dawn of civilization had hung up its horseshoes. Newfound businesses mass-produced affordable cars and trucks, sold vehicles on credit, and persuaded governments to build paved roadways and highways.
In
short, market forces prevailed. Why can’t that happen again with climate
change?
Replacing
fossil fuels as the dominant power source — including for transportation
—should be a no-brainer. But governments won’t outlaw gasoline or diesel
anytime soon. Nor will Big Brother ramp up regulations fast enough to drive Big
Oil out of business.
With
motorized conveyances spewing more than a quarter of the nation’s
greenhouse gas emissions, there’s one good reason to hope that drivers spurn
their internal combustion engines sooner rather than later: plug-in horseless
carriages.
Experts
expect spending on electric vehicles to top $100 billion a
year by 2019, including up to a quarter of Ford’s fleet. Some 665,000 of them are
already on the world’s roads.
Tesla
aims to sell 55,000 of its electric cars in 2015 and 500,000 per year by
the end of this decade. Once its first non-luxury models hit the road, the
company might make a dent in the 16
million new vehicles
Americans buy every year, along with demand for gasoline.
As Alberta
Oil magazine puts it, the
upstart’s sexy cars could “signal the beginning of the end of oil.”
Tesla
may lack sales volume so far, yet it’s long on cachet. Car writers are drooling
over its Model X, a family-friendly seven-seater that will hit the road soon.
The crossover’s James Bond-esque falcon-wing
doors lift straight up. The
thing looks more like a robotic bird of prey eying its next victim than a
minivan.
Tesla
chief Elon Musk is also investing heavily in solar power and the kind of
battery storage technology that will maximize the odds that his cars will be
powered by renewable energy. He and his competitors just might do
to fossil fuels what Henry Ford did to the demand for horse-drawn
transportation. That’s huge.
Electric
vehicles propelled by coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy aren’t exactly
green. They wouldn’t stave off a full-blown climate crisis, even if they did
send the oil industry into a tailspin. But by boosting demand for localized solar power, the electric car industry could accelerate the coal
industry’s demise and depress demand for electricity generated from
natural gas.
When Geoff
Ralston — the guy who created
Yahoo’s email in 1997 — gazes at the automotive industry in his crystal ball,
he sees a repeat of what occurred over the past decade with our omnipresent
e-gadgetry.
Once
gas stations begin to shut down, “owning a gasoline-powered car will positively
suck,” Ralston predicts. “Then, there will be a rush to electric cars not seen
since, well, the rush to buy smartphones… The future of automotive
transportation is an electric one, and you can expect that future to be here
soon.”
If
you don’t agree, try studying the history of urban horse manure management. It
may change your mind.
Columnist Emily
Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national
editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords.org.