According to various survey done only in the last 2 years, there is still in astounding array of misunderstanding.
A British survey conducted in 2018 found that 42% of participants thought that you couldn’t drive a battery electric vehicle through a car wash, an alarming statistic given that by 2030 Boris Johnson the current prime minister of Britain has said that fossil fuel cars will be banned from sale – in 10 years the British government must not only ban fossil fuel cars, but convince the British public that the electric car is going to be able to cope with a simple things that’s being driven through a car wash (though I person who finds this statistic alarming, why wouldn’t you- it is after all all, an item designed to live outside).
Only 4 in 10 Americans have any aspirations to own an electric car in the future – given that holding global warming at a survivable level, requires the end of fossil fuel use (and that electric cars are some of the lowest hanging easiest deal with fruit), and again this is in the country that created Tesla.
More alarming still, Ford did a survey last year which found that 42% of Americans believed and electric car still needed fossil fuels to run. Given the current sales of Tesla, one would think that they could increase it by 42% overnight- simply by educating the future customers. This is an astounding statistic, given that Tesla is now considered the most valuable car company, almost half of Americans do not understand to the first thing about an electric car. This presumably assumes that these 42% think you cannot get pure battery electric cars and that these are all hybrids, though it shows how much education Tesla still has to do do if it is just sell the majority of cars in the States as pure electric.
80% of participants in similar surveys regularly believe that electric cars are never going to be as fast as fossil fuel cars. Given the Tesla s does 0 to 60 and 2.3 seconds, and a Tesla roadster supposed to do it in less still, this is another misunderstanding. You said that it’s hard to understand how to correct this misunderstanding giving how much attention has been given to the rapid acceleration of electric cars. Perhaps the problem is down to the electric milk floats that have been used around the world for the last 50 or more years – incredibly quiet, these started to appear 70 years ago. However the usage requirements of a milk float give a false opinion of electric vehicles- they need to be quiet, they need only go go 10 to 20 miles and they never need to get up to a speed much about 5 or 10 miles an hour as they will be stopping again in just a few metres. Electric cars have a different use and therefore comparing the two is pointless- who in their right mind would compare are a car from the 1930s, and decide on the basis of it that they weren’t going to get a modern fossil fuel car.
One of the few encouraging statistics, is that this does not apply to millennial’s. Among people looking at buying a new car only 16% were considering electric, however within this 16%, 80% were millennial’s suggesting that this age group are more educated in electric cars and are likely to drive this move. It does also suggest that baby boomers-the generation most easily blamed (having ignored studies and not change their behavior) for our current situation I have no interest in helping to fix this.
