"What you have wrong is your attiude Jack"
Thank you for being honest. Most people say "misinformation" when they really mean "information I don't like, or that doesn't match what I've already been told."
"Clearly electric vehicles are a symptom of many things you hate, like change and science."
Yes, you're right, I hate change and science so much I joined the Spindetop project at MIT, corresponded and met with Stallman for years, and ran a Debian-based co-op for a decade. /s
Now allow to me to respond forthrightly to what you've said. "Change" and "Science" are inherently amoral. Some changes are to be feared... I believe a lot of people are very frightened of climate change, while others have had their lives destroyed by everything from Facebook, which at one point was cited in one of three divorce cases, to OnlyFans. Other changes, like the Green Revolution or computer-controlled fuel injection, were manifestly helpful. While every fifty-year-old, myself included, is occasionally annoyed by superficial change in society -- AutoTune! -- no reasonable human being views "change" as a monolithic entity and/or treats it as such.
When you write "science", I am going to (perhaps wrongly) assume that you don't mean the tedious process of scientific discovery and refinement, but rather SCIENCE! in the liberal-arts sense. This SCIENCE! is perceived by its adherents as a religion and a dogma, much like astrology or the examination of entrails to determine fate. It's common for people who have no firsthand experience with science to think of SCIENCE! as some kind of magic box that just can't help delivering new and better things.
Allow me to disabuse you of that notion. Science has limits, and in many cases those limits are set by the laws of physics. The process of alchemy attracted many of the world's best minds for the better part of three millennia without producing a single result. Why? Because the natural laws prevent it. While one could arguably change lead into gold via atomic-level manipulation, our experience shows us that Drexler was wrong and nanotech doesn't work that way.
Similarly, you can throw a trillion dollars a year at producing a perfect car battery, but the results so far suggest that it is like alchemy, with the additional caveat of you could blow up a lot of boats while learning just how wrong you are.
Prior to writing anything about EVs here at Hagerty, I spent a lot of time reading source materials about battery tech and speaking to the people who are trying to make it happen firsthand. The most common refrain I hear from the experts is that we are "ten years away" from having a usable gasoline-equivalent car battery. If you're a scientist or engineer, you know what "ten years away" means, but if you aren't I will tell you: it means "there's no path, and a MIRACLE needs to happen here <--".
What we are seeing in the public sphere is the antithesis of scientific thought and behavior. We are seeing POLITICAL thought and behavior, masquerading badly as "trusting the science" or "believing the science". This is why I so commonly quote O'Brien's "float off the floor" quote; it shows how people really think politics can force the hand of science, when in fact such a thing cannot occur and has never occurred.
Furthermore, the very arc of public policy belies your faith, because if EVs were a compelling proposition we wouldn't need legislation or mandates or political pressure to make it happen. If a super-battery existed, you'd have to force the OEMs to keep making any sort of gas car whatsoever, because they'd all be breaking their necks to convert their factories and build the next big thing. As a rude example: the government had to mandate the chemical-explosive airbag, but they sure as heck didn't have to mandate the building of body-on-frame SUVs in 1993, did they?
Thank you for your participation on this article. It won't reassure you, and you won't believe it because it conflicts with your heartfelt beliefs, but I want you to know that I have been in the service of science and change for the better part of thirty-five years now, and do not intend to change. I am simply not in the service of magical thinking, political tyranny, or post-humanist theories of social control
