What the iPhone can teach us about electric cars January 23, 2010
Posted by richard in : Green cars, Technology , trackbackELECTRIC car owners suffer from range anxiety – that of worrying that the batteries will run out before your journey does.
As I run diesel long-termers which, with a full tank, will take me 800 miles or more, this isn’t something I’m familiar with. Well, it wasn’t, until I got an iPhone.
Apple’s iconic mobile is famed for many things, including its, err, famously minimalistic battery capacity. So it proved, right away, with mine.
It was either risking running flat. Forcing emergency recharges from me. Or, when it wasn’t doing that, had me fretting about it going flat instead. I became obsessed with finding USB sockets, topping it up, keeping it swimming.
I even delayed journeys, just to squeeze some extra minutes in the battery. Because you never know.
Crazy. But a few weeks hence, I began to think differently.
I’ve now learned that it won’t just run out. That I’ve yet to go on a journey long enough to deplete it. And that, where I do, I ensure it’s both fully charged and there are known means of filling it further should it prove necessary. A bit more planning at first, but second nature now.
It’s really not the crippling hardship I initially feared. Yet the few weeks of range anxiety still strike me – not least because I spent those weeks telling folk how damn utter rubbish the battery was. Folks whose first iPhone-related feedback could well have been about battery life.
There are lessons here, if you’re still with me, for electric car marketers. My experience was painful enough, and that’s on a £200 phone, which doesn’t carry the ‘risk of leaving me stranded’.
How do you get round it with cars? How do you make that initial word-of-mouth spread one of positivity, not gripes? Hmm. They’ve got 5 years to work it out…
UPDATE: If all else fails, there are also portable chargers: this Mashable guide shows 5 options.
Comments»
Very true. People will get used to just topping up when they park, just like you stick your iPhone on charge when you’re at your desk. See my first impressions of electric cars here:
http://www.octanegossip.com/driving-blog/electric-smart-car-driving/
[...] What the iPhone can teach us about electric cars [...]
Bang on the money, Neill. iPhone charge mechanics not an issue at all now, and I’m sure it’ll be easy to sort with cars, too. No, I can’t charge the iPhone EVERYWHERE, but I can charge it up enough to ensure I’m never left with it flat. Same for cars – where else do you need charging points, realistically, if you can do it at home and work?
You can’t plug electric cars in everywhere. But you can’t fill IC cars up everywhere, either. With a bit of foresight and consideration of the logistics, EV issues are far from impenetrable.
The mindset and range anxiety, however, may take a bit more sorting…
[...] What can the iPhone teach us about electric cars? [...]