Slowly, surely and quietly, electric vehicles are here – let the battle begin

Something is happening with cars. It’s hard to see exactly what yet, but I think I can see the vague outlines under the bright red silken sheet cars dealers love to drape over a new model.

There, I can make out the merest trace of Peter FitzSimons’ sneering smile as he sits like an electric assassin at the wheel of his Tesla, judging the manhood of the Maserati driver in front of him on the Spit Bridge.

A Tesla Model S idles in Davos ahead of the World Economic Forum in January.Credit: Bloomberg

Here is the vertiginous climbing sales graph of electric cars in Australia. Up 300 per cent, off a low base to be sure, but soaring vertically instead of declining significantly like the sales of older, petrol driven vehicles.

I could even hear the change – or rather discern it in the quiet absence of grunting, coughing internal combustion engines – as I have walked around the Italian cities of Rome, Bologna and Milan the past two weeks. Europe is many years ahead of us in the adoption of clean technology for baseload power and for transport, and you can literally hear and smell the difference on the streets.

One downside? Electric vehicles (EVs) are much quieter than even the tiny petrol-driven scooters Roman used to love and you have to keep even more of your wits about you listening for their approaching whisper as you meander from one aperitivo spot to the next.

One of the truly critical inflection points was effected by Boris Johnson, of all people, when, having secured Brexit, his government immediately moved to ban the sale of all petrol driven vehicles in the UK from 2035. A new era of freedom in old Blighty for sure.

You’ll hear the arguments that such a change would be impossible here because we’re such a big, tough country, that we need big tough utes and 4WDs to conquer our special tyrannies of distance. But that’s just rhetoric.

Most Australians drive probably less than 50 or 60 kilometres a day and they do so on city roads that are much less suitable to enormous Toorak tractors than they are to smaller and more nimble EVs. Especially when those newer, more advanced vehicles can park themselves.

One downside of electric vehicles is that they are much quieter than even tiny petrol-driven scooters and you have to keep even more of your wits about you listening for their approaching whisper.Credit: iStock

None of this is to argue that we’re all about to join hands and step into a battery-powered future. There are few tech sectors more likely to be turned into battle grounds for our never-ending culture war than the car industry.

Men, in particular, are vulnerable to emotional attacks targeted at the pain points in our sense of self. Vice.com ran a piece last week investigating how sports utility vehicles (SUVs) conquered the market for family transport. Spoiler: the car companies appealed to base fear and loathing.

SUVs, according to their marketing research, appealed powerfully and directly to the sort of gullible marks who are so easily influenced by reactionary political rhetoric. Who has been buying SUVs since automakers turned them into family vehicles, Vice asked?

The automakers’ own internal documents, quoted by Keith Bradsher, a former New York Times motoring editor, revealed that “they tend to be people who are insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbours or communities.”

But the thing about those people? They’re greedy. As the cost of EVs fall, and the power they deliver grows, they will eventually flip.

It’s one of the few bright spots, looking forward.