Why should everyone have an electric car?

Some excellent thinking this month from the Italian complexity theorist Luca Dellanna:

Two days ago, the EU parliament approved a ban on new fossil fuel cars starting in 2035. While I like the idea of greener cars, I’m not too fond of a fast and complete transition.

   Let me use the metaphor of the Summer Olympic Games – an event with attractive economics during the planning phase that predictably overruns its budget by enormous amounts (an average of 213 per cent!). The Olympic Games are the only infrastructural megaproject that always has cost overruns. Why? Partly because it has inescapable deadlines – and everything is more costly when rushed.

   I am terrified that putting an artificial deadline to the electric transition might cause a similar scrambling, making it more costly and worse executed than otherwise.

I think this is right. And I sincerely hope this legislation was devised as a shot across the bows to frighten the car industry into action, only to be quietly ignored as the deadline nears.

Never forget that Luddites often have a point. When a new technology emerges, it usually arises as a novel alternative to something that already exists. As such, it seems a bit silly to denounce it. ‘If you don’t like it, don’t use it.’ Unfortunately, over time, the new may supplant the old entirely, to a point where you are left with fewer choices than before. Take the parking app: this was a godsend when the only alternative was carrying £7 in pound coins to feed a ticket machine. But it wasn’t long before ticket machines disappeared altogether, so anyone without a smartphone finds it almost impossible to park. In the same way, it is one thing to offer people digital TV, quite another to switch off the analogue signal.