So why electric?
I am a first generation immigrant from an Asian family but as a child I wholly accepted the individualistic culture in the US. Even though most of my friends were Asian-American, I identified closer with those who did not tie their identity to their asian ancestors. With that backdrop, let’s dive into the why’s of electric cars.
In 2003, I started work for a large defense contractor in the US and spend 9 years building my career. At the time, US government funded intelligence systems to better predict and understand terrorism across the world. Technology was just starting to get really good at global scale. Google was 6 years old and not a dominant search engine – that title was held by Yahoo. People thought Craigslist was a great way to communicate, even though it was manually moderated. Conceptually, building data centers was ground breaking technology as we learned we needed to optimize for heat management and electricity, and begin building custom hardware for rack mounted systems. It was a wild time of innovation across all dimensions.
I competed for government awards and sometimes won and sometimes lost. I saw contractors with loose standards, promising to deliver capability, get funded for completely untested concepts. I saw young soldiers make decisions about how to allocate millions of dollars. It was a bitter pill as the United States continued to invest in overseas interests for both infrastructure and intelligence gathering when the whole point was to obtain control.
I believe back then, as I do today, that the pursuit of oil resources has created a network of supply/demand relationships that take away resources from bigger and more important challenges. This lead me to make a personal decision to not use gasoline, avoid plastics, and reduce consumption. I believe this is the best way to deprioritize overseas interests and focus on domestic betterment.
Electric cars represent an opportunity to displace the 376 million gallons of gasoline we consume daily (see: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/transportation.php). This, combined with our internal sources of gasoline allow the US independence from the influence of oil rich countries, which will lead to domestic and foreign policies shaped by what is best for the US citizen and what is best for the world. As of this writing, US gasoline consumption is below the peak value in 2007 of 382 million gallons a day and I am proud to be a part of this equation. In some small viewpoint, we’ve won.
But looking deeper at the problem, I realized that gasoline is still a core part of our energy mix and even though my small part is done, we still have 376 million gallons converting to atmospheric pollution daily. This can’t be good for anyone – although it’s likely not as horrible as people say. I don’t like that much going into the air and doubt doing so will be helpful to my 8 year old daughter. We need to find a way to accelerate our independence from foreign oil, and find alternative means of energy so that we can have a long-lasting future.
A few basic concepts I’ve learned along the way:
Buying gasoline is a chore and not doing that chore is great!
Electricity is 90% cheaper than gasoline when comparing moving something a mile and it’s cheap enough I don’t have to ask for people to chip in gas. I save $1,000 per year per car and I don’t drive much.
Charging is not simple and requires a new way of thinking. This is hard to learn but once done, it’s great.
Electric motors are indestructible. Ask someone who has left electric power tools outside or in the rain if they’re worried compared to gasoline or oil engines.
No engine revs and goofy fun with the throttle response. Just quiet and efficient travel. This is good and bad.
US auto companies are falling behind and it is depressing to see the lack of innovation. I prefer purchasing American-made products when possible and some of these American companies may not survive.
Once you’re empowered with the high-level concepts, buying an electric car requires you to trust but verify these concepts for yourself. In my next blog post, we’ll go over a lot more of my story and why I think it helped me become a strong advocate.
The car in the picture is a 2023 Mercedes-AMG SL63 and it was mine. Sold it to think about how EVs shape the world for the better.
