| I got upgraded once to a yellow mustang in San Francisco. I admit, I wasn't unhappy about that. I reserved the economy car, I ended up driving around the valley in a yellow mustang. With a big smile on my face. But it wasn't necessarily a great car. It had a lot of condensation on the inside of the car in the morning. I've never seen that in any other car. My suitcase barely fit in the back. Etc. A lot of form over function in that car. I don't own a car. In fact, I've never owned one. I just rent cars when I need them, which isn't all that often these days. I live in Berlin which is a big city that wile car friendly (by European standards) is a bit of a PITA to get around in by car. And there's public transport. And it takes about fifty minutes to even leave the city in a car because you are stuck in stop start traffic. But if I ever move out, I might need a car. If I ever buy a car, it will be electric. ICE cars are relics of the past. That mustang makes pleasing vroom vroom noises (and they are very pleasing) but that's about it. That's what they are optimized for. Even a modest EV has more torque (the whole point of a muscle car), better handling, etc. And they are just a lot more practical. EV performance breaks the illusion that a muscle car is, well, a muscle car. As for EVs being boring. Many of them are. Especially those in the US because it's currently cut off from the rest of the world and not exactly state of the art at this point. If you want exciting EVs to lust after, go to China. They have them in every shape and size. The new xpeng looks great, there's the huawei car, the BYD u7 and u9. And some of those are quite affordable (in China). They are unobtainium elsewhere of course, which adds to their desirability. I don't speak from experience of course, but I do watch a lot of EV reviews. There's this myth that EVs can't be fun. They can be. It's not about the noise but it is about the highly tunable driving experience, ridiculous torque, etc. What works for muscle cars (big engine, light weight car) also works for EVs. Some of the more affordable fun options are smaller, lighter cars. Even retro conversions of classic sports cars can be a lot of fun apparently. And some of those end up being lighter after their conversion and handle better than the original. And I bet there are a few classic muscle car conversions. Are they still fun if you take away the vroom vroom noise but otherwise increase all the performance metrics? I don't know. It probably still is quite a lot of fun to drive one. |
I think they will be one soon, say, 25 years from now, but I don't think we're quite there yet, at least not in America where a family fun trip can be 5 days of driving thousands of miles for camping or tourism purposes.
Fast charging needs to be ubiquitous, and charging needs to be faster, batteries need to get better, ranges need to get longer, and EVs need to get cheaper, and you need to give the whole system time to transition once those do become available.
All of that has to happen in order to relicize the ice vehicle.