A Professional Fleet Manager’s First Drive in an Electric Car
“My electric car and I have a thing.”
When I walk up to the car, she greets me and opens the door handles, adjusts my seat, wheel, and mirrors. I’ve already turned the climate control on from the Tesla app on my phone. I get in, put it in drive and go. She closes my garage automatically as we leave and opens as I arrive at home.
What did I miss?
A key – in my pocket, a push button ignition, not necessary, warming it up in the dead of winter, no need. I feel like I found the hole in the wall like the cartoons when I was a kid and I can see the future.
Let’s go.
I thought I should document this “thing” so you can understand a bit about how Auto 2.0 will impact you…and change you.
Let me start with what I don’t believe.
I don’t believe that the 255 million traditional vehicles in the US will become paperweights. I do believe that the EV (electric vehicle) and AV (autonomous vehicle) age is upon us and by 2025, EV/AV production will be at least 30% of vehicle production, possibly more.
For fourteen years I’ve been a professional Fleet manager, offering advice and strategy to hundreds of companies with vehicle fleets nationwide.
I am professionally agnostic to brand, model, appearance, advertisements, and little gadgets, relying only on functionality and figures to compare vehicles analytically. Personally, my business partner and I enjoy driving cars with technology that gives us insights into the future of our industry.
I’ve sat in no less than 3,000 brand new vehicles of all brands. I have made a science of being agnostic, finding vehicles for myself and our team that appreciate in value. This is so true that my wife regularly calls me to ask what type of car she is driving because she can’t nd it in the parking lot.
“I love to learn the newest technology and see the future.”
I used to think the Mercedes S-class and others like it was the source of the newest and most innovative technologies. I then realized that is a “yesterday car” as innovative and safety-gadget- laden as it may be, built by a yesterday auto industry OEM attempting to evolve a yesterday car rather than build cars of tomorrow from the ground up. The same OEM’s make hybrid models of regular cars. They make electric Porsche Cayenne’s with green brake calipers. I’m not impressed. Such vehicles are not tomorrow. They are a “bow” toward market forces without meaningful innovation. They were the first whispers in the wind until the freight train arrived…Tesla, Fisker (now extinct), Google, Apple, Olli, and Faraday Futures. Tesla is now the third largest American car manufacturer.
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