INTRO: The introduction of any new system causes perturbations within the current operating environment, which in turn, create behavioral responses, some predictable, many not. As University of Michigan professor emeritus and student of system-human interactions John Leslie King observes “People find ways to use systems for their own benefit not anticipated by designers and developers. Their behavior might even be contradictory to hoped-for outcomes.”
“Change rides on the rails of what doesn’t change,” King notes, “including people being self-serving.”
As we noted early in the series, EVs are a new class of cyberphysical systems that dynamically interact with and intimately depend upon both energy and information systems of systems to function. When used as the catalyst to fundamentally transform an economy in a decade like the Biden Administration desires, EVs profoundly change both concurrently, affecting society on the scale of a magnitude 8.3 earthquake followed by the 1,700 foot mega-tsunami it creates.
Nothing in modern society operates without reliable access to both energy and information, and they are connected in ways we do not fully understand. Agitate one or the other, let alone both simultaneously, without comprehending or actively planning contingencies for how the countless and frequently fragile interactions between them will be affected, is asking to be unpleasantly surprised by the aftershocks created. Creating far-reaching technology policy first and then figuring out the myriad of engineering details needed to implement it second, is always going to be a high-risk strategy that needs an appropriate level of wariness.
The perturbations caused by transitioning EVs to scale are not market-driven, but government policy-driven to meet a climate-emergency. This need to act creates even more uncertain socio-economic and technological perturbations, disruptions and distortions to be dealt with.
How, or even whether, EVs would have transitioned to scale without the forcing function of government actions to decarbonize transportation and energy is an interesting one to ponder. EVs may have eventually replaced internal combustion engine vehicles (ICE) without government policy mandates, incentives and subsidies, but not in the time they are projected to do so today. A critical unanswered question is whether both society and government can successfully adjust to such a rapidly imposed change. (MORE - details)