American Consequences - May 2021

and Japan (via Panasonic and Toyota, although the Japanese view hydrogen as a better fuel for their own market). Battery research was previously the domain of eggheads too nerdy for management, until their masters felt compelled to react to Elon Musk’s oft-peculiar exertions. Every major car company now views battery R&D as a propriety must-have. “We used to define a car company as a place that pressed its own metal and made its own engines, outsourcing everything else,” says auto journalist Aaron Robinson. “But in the future, they’ll effectively become software companies, with EV computer codes being the most important thing they do and own. The car is just the box the computers come in.” With advertisements touting ever-greater range, even when it’s a myth, EVs introduced a year ago now feel outdated, as home computers did in the 1990s. At least for the American Big Three, switching assembly lines to EVs poses minimal pain: fewer parts, fewer

fluids, a cleaner build, and an outsourced powerplant that pops in and out like toast in a toaster. The malodorous elephant in the room, of course, is the recharging infrastructure that so obviously will be required. Such stations must be as ubiquitous as existing gas stations, of which America boasts 115,000. A further hurdle is that Americans are opposed to any inconvenience – wearing masks, lifting a finger to activate a turn signal – and will not tolerate a recharging experience one erg more tedious than pumping 15 gallons of unleaded. How to recharge an EV in that same five to 10 minutes? Free Big Gulps? No one yet knows. EV manufacturers typically quote recharging times that represent only 20% to 80% of actual capacity. If you guess wrong and need to obtain 40 or 50 extra miles to finish your errands and drive home, a public DC fast- charger might do it in 30 minutes. But a full charge in your garage takes more like seven

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