I keep hoping that a better-informed opposition would get us better choices in cars, but maybe superstition-level passion reaches a lot more people.
There's a lot of sentiment attached to the gasoline car--for a lot of reasons. It's a lot like clipper ships or the steam locomotive. I want an electric car quite a lot, but I still spent the last few days patching up my old gas-burner--transmission flush actually got it really hauling ass today; I made about 90mph on a test run which is about as fast as I've ever gone except when I went up in an airplane.
Gasoline is ingrained into the fabric of the motor imagination and current-day electric cars are definitely not inspiring that very active imagination for a lot of folks who have an interest in machinery. You don't have electric cars that have the appeal of the gasoline motor--electrics with their plasticky body shells and bizarre curves and lighting end up looking like a bad combination between a Cuisinart, a gaming PC, and some kind of sex toy the Vatican would try to ban if they knew about it. The Prius, on paper, is a cool car--but it's the definition of uncool, right up there with the Pontiac Aztek and Chrysler PT Cruiser. And don't get me started on new electric cars--not everyone likes the dashboard to be made out of basically an iPad.
I like Ford Model T's. They're the definition of lousy but they are just so weirdly homemade-looking. I want to drive one. But if I had to live with it I'd take the money and go buy a horse instead--if I'm going to put that much work into a substandard means of transportation I might as well make a pet out of it.
Even my very worn out Toyota Corolla is
fun to work on--it's an objectively terrible car; it's falling apart and my friends have described it as:
"your car sounds like it runs on nightmares."
(
sad 12-volt cranking noises) "--are you going to get it started or should I call us all an Uber?"
"why would you replace the engine when you could get a newer car?"
"ooh, I can see the ground through it."
"--is that moss?"
"I don't like it, it's full of ants."
"- did you
drive that here?"
"What is THAT?"
"I can't believe you still have that thing."
I would gladly put it on bricks and turn it into a hen-house, and have threatened to do so--but I can't bring myself to junk it yet, for a sort of silly sentimentality. It was not just the first car I had, but the first car I ever saw--I was brought home from the hospital in that thing when I was born and I will probably use it as the get-away car when I marry, even though it smells like dust & decaying plush and handles like a farm tractor.
Gasoline cars are a cultural thing for people. As
@Forest Cat said, "I like Ford, it's so American," even though Fords themselves are assembled from U.S. and imported components and sold world-wide the individuality, the personality, the perversely mechanical
Fordness of them is rather impressively American in a strange way--Henry Ford, weird as he was in personal life, was a sort of mythological figure--like Odin on Sleipnir, he rode into history on twenty vanadium-steel horses under a ripped canvas top, and never really left the popular consciousness. He didn't just give us the car; he gave us the crappy used econoboxes, DIY'ed hot-rods, and sagging farm trucks that remain the prime mover of transportation for Real America, at least in an ideal sense.
My problem isn't with electric cars. It's that electric cars aren't cool yet. I know Teslas exist & see them often; they are eminently forgettable. They look like bars of soap when the lettering wears off. We need electric cars that are deliberately cheap and crappy, simple, repairable with baling wire and determination--cars you can run off the road, get out, and put back on the road. We need cars with stripped-down interiors and minimalist design, not built for design students to have Rotomolded in plastic but something that actually feels like the gearhead's design of a car--and since that varies from car nerd to car nerd, how about something that can be hot-rodded with welders and wrenches instead of a laptop? Something that won't "brick your operating system" if you chop it 3 inches and give it some stance?
And all this is why my favorite classic vehicle remains the "roadster" bicycle as it is just a few pieces of gas-pipe, a handful of ball bearings, and two 28" wheels with high-pressure clincher tires. Brakes on it are a suggestion, steering is vague, value is so low you can park it without locking it up--and going places feels like freedom.
My next car will be electric, but I am still going to build that sucker from scratch. They don't make a car I want, so the old four-door sedan stays on the road until I can get a chance to weld up a frame and hit the road in something made with real steel and leaf-springs, a steering wheel with gears instead of a servo motor, tires that I can change myself on the side of the road (because where I drive you can't always get a tow-truck), and no A/C or power windows or massaging heated seat. It needs to be 3/4 the size of a Corolla. Self-driving, for a lot of people, means you take a steering-wheel and drive it yourself!
If I had more money, I would have a very big Ford collection.
