Replacing Gasoline Powered Cars
A controversial topic in today’s world is the issue of global warming. Although more than 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that the recent increase in the Earth’s temperatures are due to human activities only 69% of the general public share this sentiment. The transportation industry is a major contributor of greenhouse gases which increase the effects of global warming.
Gasoline is what historically what the vast majority of vehicles have been built to run on. Burning gasoline however releases many harmful chemicals and greenhouse gases like CO2 into the atmosphere. To counteract this lots of research has been done into alternative fuels and power sources for vehicles in order to replace the use of gasoline in vehicles. In class we have discussed diffusion of new innovations in networks. From what we learned it is easy to see why gasoline is still the prevalent fuel source for cars the primary source of transportation.
Gasoline is not the cheapest, most efficient or most environmental friendly fuel source however it is still the top-dog in large part to its vast infrastructure or network. Gasoline has the advantage that its already in place with over 150,000 gas stations nationwide and the majority of cars both new and old are built to run on it. Other fuel sources have been able to carve out niches in the transportation industry which is analogous to the clusters we have investigated in class. For example diesel and natural gas is used for many larger vehicles like heavy trucks, trains, buses and military vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells are used in forklifts.
A growing competitor to gasoline in the car industry is to electric vehicles. Electric vehicles were able to creep into the gasoline market first via hybrid vehicles but are now rolling out fully electric models. Electric cars still face an uphill battle. Many of the issues still facing electric vehicles are outlined in the following article:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/09/12/3-major-challenges-facing-electric-vehicles-that-f.aspx.
As we’ve seen in class early adopters are integral to the success of a new innovation. People however are reluctant to adopt electric cars because they are more expensive, outside of California there aren’t many places to charge them, they take hours to charge and require recharging more often than a gasoline power car needs to be refilled. Also, because a majority of the US electricity comes from fossil fuel powered power plants electric vehicles aren’t actually much if any more environmentally friendly than gasoline powered vehicles. Additionally the batteries that go into them are typically made from many hazardous metals that if not recycled properly could have significant impact. This lack of infrastructure and arguably inferior technology explains why electric vehicles haven’t really caught on (they represent less than 1% of new car sales). Electric vehicles have made great strides to show that they are a viable way to power a car. Most notably Tesla has shown that electric vehicles can be sexy, powerful and luxurious in addition to the arguable environmental benefits. Tesla however is not a major car manufacturer and has only been able to impact a small cluster of the car industry that is predominantly on the west coast.
Electric vehicles and other fuel sources still have a long way to go before they begin to challenge gasoline powered cars. It will require a few more technological breakthroughs before these technologies catch on and receive more support. As evident by the cascade behavior in networks it only takes a few major automobile companies to really believe in a technology and become early-adopters for a technology to take off.