Lunch with Green Car Blogger Jon LeSage

Green car blogger Jon LeSage and I had identical experiences early last week. We both came across each other’s names, recognized them from our travels in the industry, and said, “I want to talk to that guy.” This all culminated in a three-hour lunch yesterday in Santa Monica, CA.

Jon is the Automotive Editor, Green Initiatives at Automotive Digest Weekly Green, which goes out to about 60,000 readers/viewers. I had come across his stuff largely in connection with the role I play at EV World, consulting to various types of players in electric transportation. Jon has a fantastic command of the language and real personality and voice as a writer.

More importantly, he’s on the right side of the issues here. In fact, if I had any complaint about the lunch experience, it was that we agree on practically everything; I like a bit of controversy with my crab and arugula salad.  

Perhaps one minor point of dissension is this: the most important gating factor to EV adoption.  Jon thinks it’s range anxiety, which is certainly a popular concept.  But consider this:  there are 25 million multi-car families in the U.S. alone, in which one of the cars virtually never travels farther in a day than the range of a Nissan LEAF.  

I think the issue is fear more generally.  Consumers don’t want to shell out $35,000 for something that may come to be regarded as the automotive equivalent of the Betamax (i.e., a technology platform that never got off the ground).  We need a combination of better value (costs coming down, benefits (including range) going up — which are, in fact, happening) and enough time to let nature take its course, letting the word of mouth spread about how cool it is to never pull into a gas station again.   

In any case, Jon took 14 pages of notes from which he’ll be crafting a story; it will be interesting to see what he comes up with.