Question: What sort of cars do you drive, do you drive electric cars if so what kind.

Jeni Spragg answered on 15 Jun 2016:

Hey Willybob12,

I don’t have a car at the moment, as I live in a city and don’t need one. I’d like to say that if I had a car, it would be an electric one, but truthfully I’d probably have a petrol car. At the moment, it’s still quite hard to own an electric car, and expensive to buy one.

I did a project on the use of alternative fuels in the EU, and it was fascinating. We were trying to understand all the complex interactions between society, economics, and technology, which determine whether people will buy alternative fuel vehicles.

There is a theory called ‘technology lock-in’ which explains how a society becomes locked in to a particular technology, often thanks to a combination of historical accidents. A good example often given is the ‘QWERTY’ keyboard. It was designed as the best layout for mechanical keyboards. Now we have digital technology, other layouts would probably be more efficient, but society is so used to ‘QWERTY’ that we’re stuck with it now. The same could be said for petrol and diesel cars, few people are likely to go to the inconvenience & expense of an electric car unless someone intervenes to help electric cars break into the market – that’s where the politicians come in!

Hopefully, in 10 years or so, owning an electric car will be normal – we are at a tipping point now where they could start to take off. In the Netherlands, the government has promised to ban petrol and diesel cars from 2025 onwards.

(Sorry, that was a pretty long answer, you set me off on an interesting topic!)