Are electric cars the best city cars today? Tomorrow?

Is this really breaking the mold of urban mobility?

Is the industry even close to the right model?

If there were charging stations everywhere, would urban consumers flock to electric cars at today’s prices? If software could make cars virtually crash-proof, would consumers care about the size of their vehicles? Would they embrace small cars and their ability to maneuver the city landscape more easily? If we didn’t have to drive, would consumers give up the angst of the urban grind?

What makes the best city car, the best city car?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue the last few days as I worked on 2012 Best hybrid cars for the city today, a feature for Soultek.com. The good news is that hybrid cars make cost-effective sense today, particularly small hybrids such as the Toyota Prius C. The bad news is that US urban auto culture is almost completely dysfunctional and void of any real logic, particularly when it comes to urban transportation.

For instance, would consumers flock to electric cars if charging stations existed everywhere, but still at today’s EV prices?

I believe more consumers would buy electric cars, but not that many more, at least not relative to total US  auto sales. The extra upfront costs and limited range just don’t add up in the mental calculator of most consumers.

I know plug-in advocates will argue that for two car families, an EV makes lots of sense when backed up with a conventional gasoline powered vehicle, but they don’t.

Today, electric cars should be smaller and lighter, etc. compared to conventional cars. The form should follow the function. A pure commuter car isn’t the car you and the boys are going to race to Vegas in on a Friday night. It’s the vehicle that one person is going to drive to work and back in, and it should better fit that purpose, especially since it’s limited by range and costs.

An electric car is NOT a conventional car, and that’s a good thing. Embrace it.

Apples to apples electric cars simply won’t match conventional vehicles without major technological breakthroughs. Thus, the key has to be cost-effectiveness, even today. And how do you make them more cost-effective? KISS.

In the last decade, bikes have begun to lose their appeal in China. Instead, e-bikes are taking over. How much more simple, yet practical can electronic mobility be? That’s more than 100 million electric vehicles sold in just the last decade, and it’s probably far closer to the future of urban transportation than is the Nissan Leaf or the Telsa Model X.

Obviously, e-bikes are not going to take over the US, at least not without a major depression, but I believe that many urban consumers — more than currently buying electric cars — would embrace a truly cost-effective, unique urban mobility solution.

Besides, automakers need to think more like technology companies.

If you’re a tech company trying to chase today’s buzzwords, it’s already over. You have to develop tech around tomorrow’s buzzwords.

Ironically, I think almost every automaker would describe the future of urban transportation beginning with the phrase ‘pod-like’. So, why are automakers trying to build electric cars that look like today’s cars, especially when they know it’s a costly and inefficient utilization of battery technologies? Especially when they know that the future of urban transportation simply cannot, and won’t, look like it does today?

Ultimately, the success of the electric car requires the automotive mold to be fully broken, not just partially broken. So break it!

Already, EV makers are asking consumers to change their entire perception of range and refueling, while also asking consumers to concurrently spend significantly more upfront. Is there really any wonder consumers aren’t buying? If consumers are going to be asked to completely rethink their mobility expectations, why not package that change in the most cost-effective package as possible?

Plug-in advocates cite average commutes and how current electric cars meet those requirements. I bet average consumer needs also demonstrate that for more than 90 percent of commutes, only 1 seat is needed. So, why are we selling 4 or 5? Why are we adding extra batteries to propel the weight of 4 people, when 90 percent of commuters only need to move one and when those extra batteries are pushing costs too high?

Make it blatantly cost-effective, particularly up front,  for a single person to buy a 1 – 2 person transportation pod and they’ll have plenty of extra money to rent a vehicle when they need more functionality.

The facts demonstrate that crash-proof cars are almost here, as are driver-less ones. So why not start using these technologies in the types of vehicles that would most benefit from such capabilities, rather than luxury cars? Think the future, especially the future automakers already envision. Both of these technological trends enable the development of entirely new and revolutionary models of mobility — models that would probably already work in places like China, aka, the future of the auto industry.

Today’s automakers are too-big-to-fail, complacent giants. Even worse, the entire US auto industry is built around a business model that drowns the world in pollution, requires war-causing foreign oil consumption and puts consumers in the poor house because we buy — well, finance — more car than needed. And EVs today are just as nonsensical.

If you follow the battery research, the consensus claims that it’s going to take another 10 years or so to bring battery costs down enough to end tax credits. Even then, however, batteries still won’t truly compete with conventional vehicles. In 10 years, however, crash-proof and driver-less cars will be proven technologies, technologies that will undoubtedly enable a new generation of urban mobility.

We could — should — be building that future today, particularly in America since we have the most to gain and lose.

Today, it’s easy to call batteries a disruptive technology because they threaten to electrify the gasoline powered transportation system. Yet, these batteries have been around for decades. It’s not the technology that is going to be most disruptive, its the business model. The mold. And today’s automakers and their electric cars simply aren’t breaking the mold.