Who Keeps Screwing Up the EV Experience?

The average daily commute in Murrka is under 30 miles. It's probably more in Canada and less in Europe.

The documentary movie Who Killed the Electric Car? released in 2006, tells the strange tale of the EV1, an electric car made by General Motors, leased  -- never sold -- from 1996 to 1999, then recalled and destroyed.

 

The subject of range anxiety -- the awful fear on the part of the driver of an electric vehicle that his machine will run out of juice at any moment and leave him stranded in the middle of high-speed Interstate traffic in the middle of a rainy night -- came up in Who Killed the Electric Car? but in a very different way than we're used to hearing about it today. Today, any EV with less than 200 miles of range per charge is judged by most reviewers to be very deficient, and those with 400 miles or more are received with great joy, even though great range is thus far only attained with a great quantity of batteries, meaning great weight and great expense. A few reviewers see through the hype about range and understand that most people will get by just fine with a range of 150 miles or less, and that most EV buyers are being sold a bunch of unnecessary batteries. Just as, traditionally, car buyers are sold huge engines which they never begin to need.

General Motors advertised a range of 70 to 90 miles for the EV1. Leasees reported a practical range of 50 or 60 miles. But none of the customers were complaining, or waiting until a newer model with longer range came out. On the contrary, demand for the EV1 far outstripped supply, the leasees were delighted with it, they wanted to buy the vehicles, they protested when the cars were recalled. Early on in the movie Ed Begley mocks the idea that the EV1 didn't go far enough on a charge, saying that it met the needs of "only about 90% or so of all drivers."

70 to 90 miles advertised range, 50 to 60 reported practical range.

It was GM who suggested that drivers of the EV1 were unsatisfied with its range. The earliest use of the phrase "range anxiety" I have been able to find is by a GM executive in Who Killed the Electric Car? claiming that EV1 drivers suffered from it, and that this was a major reason why the car was recalled. He referred to it as "so-called range anxiety," as if he himself had not invented the term with the intent of inserting the concept into consumers' minds. Some of the guys from Detroit are pretty slick.

There's also a scene in the movie where two former EV1 drivers talk about how big corporations will keep telling you things until you start to believe that they must be true. Such as that you want a nice big SUV.

Surely you've noticed how many car and SUV and truck commercials show vehicles driving through the western US desert and on highways twisting through California mountains, and say to the viewers, C'mon -- you know you want to get one of these and drive the tires off of it, drive it all day long every day. Until those of us who don't live out West forget that we don't, and those who would rather not drive all day every day start to believe that we would.

And now in 2021, here come a whole great big bunch of brand-new great-big all-electric SUV's with great big long ranges deriving from literal tons of batteries per vehicle. And you want one of those $90,000, 3-ton electric SUV's that can go way over 300 miles on a charge, don't you? You need one of those, because you're an Arizona rancher -- even if you're not. You need to drive 500 miles a day in a huge pickup through the frozen Yukon, to feed the mighty moose! You don't, of course, but you see so many of those damn commercials telling you what a rugged outdoorsman you are that it sort of feels as if you do. You must feed the majestic moose! If not you, who?!

It's sort of nice to see the President test-driving an electric prototype. Sort of. It'd be really nice to see him in an electric compact car and not just in an electric F-150.

I Just Saw A Commercial...

...shot in a crowded plaza downtown in a city, might have been Rome, I'm not sure. An attractive young woman walks past leading a dog on a leash. Several young men notice her and seem attracted. The woman sits on a bench and unhooks the dog from the leash. The dog runs off. One of the young men approaches and sits on the bench next to the woman. He appears to be making small talk (the sound was off and if they were speaking Italian I might have had trouble keeping up anyway).

He reaches a hand toward the woman's lap -- where she is holding a white plastic jar. He takes a bite-sized piece of food from the jar, eats it, seems to like it, the woman smiles encouragingly and encourages him to eat more, he takes another morsel and eats it.

Just then the woman's dog comes running back. She tosses the dog a morsel from the same jar, and then turns it around so the man can see the label. From her smirk and his embarrassment, it's clear that the label identifies the jar as containing treats meant for canine, not human consumption. The woman walks away with the dog, and the man sits there with his hand on his forehead.

And... this could have been a commercial for doggie treats, or women's fashion, or men's and women's fashion, or the Roman Catholic Church, or a hidden-camera TV show (or not a commercial at all but a clip from a hidden-camera show), or a public-service announcement with a very generic message like "Things aren't always what they seem," or something else. As I've said before on this blog, I think that perhaps advertising sells less than either the general public or the people paying the ad agencies think, and that sometimes the most significant thing going on is the making of an interesting short film. I love the GEICO gecko and the GEICO pig and some other GEICO commercials (Remember the one with Peter Frampton?), but I've never had a GEICO insurance policy and I don't plan to get one.

A List of Some People I am Not Like

Anyone who thinks that Harrison Ford is the star of The Fugitive,and not Tommy Lee "gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, and dog house" Jones. But then, I am unlike Harrison Ford fans generally. Ford looks uncomfortable. That's his entire acting repertoire. (I know: sometimes he grins, but that's not acting, that's just -- icky.)

Dan Brown fans, believers in Bible Codes, people who think Merlin is more than a fictional character, (People who think Geoffrey of Monmouth wasn't an a-hole.) people who like that new McDonald's commercial in which the kid who just got his driver's license is sadistically tormented by his family, (At the very least, some McDonald's executives must have liked it, and presumably some people are under the impression that it is going over well with large segments of the population, otherwise why would it be airing so often?) (Why would anyone want a kid who just got his driver's license to snap while he's behind the wheel?) fans of McDonald's generally and anyone who doesn't at least wince at most of their commercials, people who don't think they have enough crescents, if there actually are any such on Earth, (People who don't watch a lot of TV.) people who like Celine Dion, Kenny G, Air Supply, Milli Vanilli, Heather Locklear, Angela Lansbury, Micky Rooney, James Cagney, Frank Capra, Milos Foreman...

People who don't listen to what scientists have to say about crystals, pyramids, psychics, ghosts, huge ancient alien construction in stone on Earth, global warming, the history of the Jews and of the Old Testament and of the Holy Grail and the Merovingians and the Priory of Sion and the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Catholic Church in general and the Masons -- in short, there are many who walk among us than whom I am quite different. In a word: morons. The Earth is rife with them, like Newman with fleas. I must keep in mind that they are everywhere: on the highways and byways and the sidewalks, in the bookstores and publishing houses and in the TV networks and on the editorial boards of periodicals and web presences, in the United States House of Representatives and on my block.

I Don't Know Why They Made This Commercial

Well, maybe I do. But if I understand what's going on here it's depressing as hell.

It's a recent American Airlines commercial, with a tall basketball player named Milos and his scrappy little agent who seems to be relentlessly lying his ass off, all around the world: "Milos only wants to play for Dallas." "Milos really wants to play for Brussells." "Milos only wants to play for Buenos Ares." "Milos only wants to play for blabbity-blabbity." "Milos really wants to play for hamana hamana." "Milos only wants to play for yip yip yip." And so forth. It seems obvious that Milos is not very sought-after, but his agent relentlessly presents him to different teams as if he were. And then at the end a voice-over sonorously intones: "We know why you fly."

Why exactly does this agent fly? And more to the point, why does American Airlines think that its potential customers want to fly alongside people like him? Because they like compulsive liars? Because they, too, are salespeople who are desperately misrepresenting their wares all over the world? Is there a great fraternity of lying, hustling weasels out there, flying all over the world on American Airlines?

I'm afraid that there just may be. Maybe somebody at the ad agency said, "You know, we've being doing really well for a long time with these slick and completely unrealistic ads. All these ads about nothing, which just set a mood and flatter businesspeople, with a lot of slow-mo of very good-looking actors portraying businesspeople in great suits staring sagely into glorious sunsets from luxury-hotel balconies and earnestly shaking hands in luxurious boardrooms with urban skyline views and opening very expensive-looking briefcases and wearing hard-hats with the sleeves of their dress shirts rolled up while they point at blueprints and relaxing in huge first-class seats and so forth, without giving the viewer any hint of what they're really doing. But maybe all those down-the-heel desperate Willie Lomans out there peddling crap to each other -- you know: our actual target demographic -- would appreciate a commercial that shows them as they actually are, doing what they actually do: wearing desperate smiles and desperately lying for a living. Let's make it a sports agent, to jazz it up a little. We don't want to get too real, showing a lying office-goods salesman whose desperate smile is wearing thin after twenty lean years; that might be a little too depressing. I know: a short sports agent with a tall basketball player who can't even throw a paper wad into a conference-room wastebasket while the little agent is trying his best to BS some team's board of directors. Kinda real, but cute and funny."

We Know Why You Fly: Because BS And Fear Make the World Go Round.