Unobstructed Podcast Episode 5

Colin Finkle and Edward Cervantes discuss the market for electric vehicles (EVs) in order to determine if this is a technology people actually want or something that gets a lot of attention but not the future.

Colin states his own bias; he has a plug-in electric vehicle (PHEV) and does most of his driving on all-electric, so he is already bought in. Edward has a V6 pickup but is open to purchasing an electric vehicle in the future. We talk about how EVs are hard to finance, both for the auto manufacturers and people that don’t have the credit for financing. We discuss how the used market for EVs is not comparable to the used market for internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles because of the degradation of the batteries and the growth in range. We discuss the idea of “range anxiety” and how the infrastructure needs to be built out. We talk about how, if electricity comes from high carbon emission sources like coal, EVs might not be the best choice for the environment. Eddie and Colin disagree about inductive charging. We talk about the inflection point between electric and gas, and how gas prices will rapidly rise especially in rural communities because of distribution costs. And we talk about how Tesla’s are in a market of their own, because of the band mystique around Tesla and Elon Musk. We compare it to the mystique of Apple and the iPad.

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