The day the modern EV became an everyday thing

As a car, I would already be registered as historic and I would have gone out of production some decades ago. Accordingly, it is not very difficult to amaze me with present technology. Electric cars are new and futuristic, I thought. Until today.

When exactly did you stop gazing at electric cars like they had been accidentally dropped by a passing space ship?

Well, I think I am still not used to see them or (not) hear them in my everyday life. Or am I? In my mind it is still a thing of the future. But reading car news on the internet today made me feel strange about EVs for the first time; Like I should make an update to my thinking.

I realised that it was only less than two years ago, that the first electric super car was a new and exciting thing. Today, I read about almost a ton of new electric cars, electric sportscars, electric supercars… you name it. It has become "normal". It has become bon ton or even a necessity to develop electric cars if you want to stay part of the game as a car manufacturer. Just look at recent reveals of new cars during this summer.

Thinking about the future made me blind for the present .

I live in a quite big European city and what I suddenly realised might differ from your experiences, but left me marveling about my surroundings: Teslas are flooding the city, Nissan Leafs are clogging the car park, BMW i3s are the common hire car and I cannot count how often I have encountered a BMW i8 when going to the shops.

And still, I found myself sitting at home, not knowing that I do not have to wait for a future, to see our locomotion changed. No, the future is something different. The future might have autonomous cars in it, or drones that carry us around. But electric cars? I have been waiting for something that was already part of my everyday life.

It might sound obvious to many of you, but I need to say, at least to myself (erm... yes, in public on the internet) today, that if we forget to reflect on what is happening right now and just focus on what the future might bring, we miss to realise that we are in the middle of a monumental transition just now. And this is wonderful to witness. It is exciting to observe.

The old lady, who wrote this (yes, me), is happy to discuss your personal view on the present and the future in the comments.