In ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, Sherlock Holmes mentions ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. ‘But the dog did nothing in the night-time,’ argues Inspector Gregory. ‘That was the curious incident,’ replies Holmes.
You never hear anyone say: ‘We finally stumbled across a charming little petrol station nestling among the trees’
Along with Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘Unknown unknowns’, this is perhaps the most famous example of what you might call ‘perceptual asymmetry’. We mostly act instinctively based on what is salient, giving little thought to what is easily overlooked.
It is hence surprisingly easy to change what people do simply by changing what they pay attention to. A magnificent example of this is the London Overground, one of the most cost-effective infrastructure projects ever undertaken, though the greater part of its success was achieved not with steel and concrete, but pixels and ink. Around 95 per cent of the track had existed for a century, but it was designated as a railway, not as a Tube line. Since most Londoners, in their solipsistic way, never consider surface rail as an option for short journeys, few had any conception that these lines or stations existed. By cannily pretending that these trains were part of the Tube network, and adding the routes to the Tube map, the invisible was made visible – and hence popular. The Overground now carries more passengers than the Elizabeth line, at about 3 per cent of the latter’s £20 billion construction cost.
I believe a similar issue – one of simple visibility – also applies to electric cars. As you are reading this, thousands of the world’s cleverest people are spending billions to increase the range of electric car batteries. The reason for this is to reduce a phenomenon called ‘range anxiety’. I suggest that it might be a lot cheaper to reduce anxiety than it is to increase range.
The truth is there is no such thing as range anxiety – we’ve all driven around in a petrol car with 30 miles left in the tank without suffering palpitations. It is really ‘infrastructure anxiety’. People know they’ll be able to find a petrol station to fill up within ten miles or so, but they don’t have the same faith in the availability of electric charging stations.
Actually Britain has a lot of electric charging stations. There are already more rapid and ultra rapid chargers than there are petrol stations. The problem is that you can’t see them. And there is an interesting reason for this. When petrol stations were first built, there was no GPS. Hence the way to sell petrol was to find a prominent space on a very busy road and set up shop with a big forecourt and a lot of bright lights in the hope that people would notice you and buy your petrol. Over time, through natural selection, the visible petrol stations survived, and the unnoticeable ones disappeared. Like peacocks, petrol stations have evolved to be ostentatious. You never hear anyone say: ‘We finally stumbled across a charming little petrol station nestling discreetly among the trees.’
By contrast, when electric car chargers were installed, the assumption was that everyone would find them using in-car navigation. There was no thought given to how prominent the locations were. Hence they are often found lurking unobtrusively in the far reaches of some obscure industrial estate. My local Sainsbury’s recently installed six 150kW chargers, but placed them in a remote exclave of the main car park. It was three months before I noticed they were there.
The solution is hence easy. Rather than increasing the range of cars, we just need to make car chargers much more flamboyant, so people realise how ubiquitous they are. They need bright flashing lights, laser displays, possibly an in-built barrel-organ. Immediately you’ll have people complaining that ‘these bloody car chargers are springing up everywhere’. To solve range anxiety, it isn’t cobalt and lithium we need – it’s neon.
How to solve ‘range anxiety’
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09.05.2024
In ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, Sherlock Holmes mentions ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. ‘But the dog did nothing in the night-time,’ argues Inspector Gregory. ‘That was the curious incident,’ replies Holmes.
You never hear anyone say: ‘We finally stumbled across a charming little petrol station nestling among the trees’
Along with Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘Unknown unknowns’, this is perhaps the most famous example of what you might call ‘perceptual asymmetry’. We mostly act instinctively based on what is salient, giving little thought to what is easily overlooked.
It is hence surprisingly easy to change what people do simply by changing what they pay attention to. A magnificent example of this is the London Overground, one of the most cost-effective infrastructure projects ever undertaken, though the greater part of its success was achieved not with steel and concrete, but pixels and ink. Around 95 per cent of the track had existed........
© The Spectator
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