EVs over there

Contrary perhaps to popular overseas perception, a lot of Americans don’t think electric cars are cool. Drive more than 50 miles outside a major city, including Los Angeles, my city, and the number of EVs you see on the road drops precipitously. This is for several reasons, some much more obvious than others.

EVs excel in urban environments where drive time is high, but miles traveled is low. In LA, a one-hour commute may not cover 20 miles. In the California central coast it would be a less EV-friendly 65 or 70 miles. More miles means less range, more space to breathe means fewer stations in which to charge.

I only use California as an example because between the San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, the state has not only the highest density of EV sales in the United States, but also probably the most noticeable discrepancies between urban and rural populations in terms of how they drive, what cars they use, what they use them for and their attitudes toward environmentalism.