Charging your car to 100%? Maybe you should not…

Out with the old…

So much of what we expect of an electric car is based on our behaviour related to traditional combustion engine automobiles:

• « filling up » the tank (we go to the gas station and « fill up » to the top- FULL !)
• Adding gasoline to a tank
• Owning the automobile

In with the new.

These old behaviours limit our future. We need to start thinking differently about electric vehicles..

• It is shown that we don’t need to « fill-up » with electricity – and that in fact – it is faster and more efficient to go up to 70%, drive, and again go to 70%.  Waiting to get to 100% charge is not efficient (see for example : https://blog.greenenergyconsumers.org/blog/smart-ev-charging-habits)
• Why do we need to put « energy » into the car? We have this mental model that says – go to a station, add energy, drive away.  So what about other models.
  • Why not change the battery? Drive up to a station, replace empty battery, drive away.
  • Why not change the car? Drive up to a station. Drop off car. Drive away with another.
• Taking gas out of a car is not easy…but taking electricity out of car is very easy – and many models are based on bi-directional chanrging (where the car charges the house for example).  The emergecne of V2V charging creates a marketplace for electricity.  At any time you can sell your energy (in your car) to someone that needs it.

So as we progress towards an increasingly electrified automobile market, we need to see what behaviours need to be changed.  Molding our future on old behaviors is easy, but limits the possibilities.

Not easy

Changing mindsets is not easy.  This gets to the heart of systemic thinking and the notion of mindset. It will take time…. but in my opinion..effective change will be founded on the adoption of new assumptions and « frames » about how we interact with transport.  Trying to « make a dog learn new tricks » is tough but beneficial

Daniel EVANS
devans@audencia.com