A Reasonable Amount of Low-Hanging Fruit for Electric Vehicles

It’s clear that inductive charging will someday replace the “plugging in” experience for the EV driver.  Qualcomm’s purchase of Halo a few years ago was a clear signal to me that this idea has some real push behind it, as I haven’t seen Qualcomm make too many mistakes in backing technologies that are poised to explode. 

Having said that, I don’t believe the jive (and I’ve heard it a great deal) that most people will shun electric transportation because they refuse to handle a physical plug; I see very little evidence of that.  What I do see is people who are unimpressed with the value proposition: They ask themselves: Should I buy a more expensive car that I can’t take on long trips? 

For now, the market is limited to:

• People who care enough about the environment to shell out a bit of money and accept a bit of inconvenience to protect it, and

• Multi-car families where at least one car is used strictly for commuting less than 100 miles per day. 

It’s hard to know how many of the first variety there are, but it’s easy to count the second: it’s approximately 25 million in the U.S. alone. That’s a fair amount of low-hanging fruit.