Since I happen to be in Thailand, here are a couple excerpts from an article about lower than expected electric vehicle sales in Thailand. I am not trying to pick on Thailand or even comment on Thai government policy, but merely give a local example of what seems to be a global trend.

Thailand on Friday signalled it was hedging its bets over its previous all-out commitment to EV cars. Instead, in a new policy announcement, the kingdom is focusing on hybrid vehicle production or HEVs…

…there is a growing realisation that the EV industry, which is capital-intensive and does not support the country’s critical automotive parts industry, has been a mixed blessing.

“We are experiencing an EV oversupply as plenty of EVs imported from China over the past two years inventories,” he explained. At the same time, he confirmed that there are presently 490,000 unsold EV cars in storage. That is 63% of all vehicles produced in Thailand over the last 12 months. In the meantime, EV vehicle sales remain a relatively small percentage of overall car sales in the kingdom. In June, vehicles for the domestic market produced in Thailand were only 34,522 units. A huge drop of 43.08%. This is a catastrophic outcome by all accounts.

Anecdotally, just from moving about the country a bit, I don’t see charging infrastructure. And this echoes what I see in (my small corner of) the United States. We haven’t built the infrastructure to support electric vehicles, and we haven’t made the policy changes like adjustments to the gas tax which funds much of our highway maintenance. So we blame problems caused by a lack of planning and implementation on the technology itself.

But there is something else here. There are winners and losers with electric vehicles. The winners are all of us and our children’s lungs, plus our water and air. But these are diffuse benefits, and politically speaking it is concentrated interests that move the political system. Big business interests like the oil and automotive industries. The reference to “car parts” is telling here. Electric vehicles are superior because they have fewer complex parts and require less maintenance and service. Just like shutting down any sprawling, inefficient, polluting Soviet industry, what is good for society means some loss of jobs and profits for a minority, and that minority has some political clout. So when we hear that electric vehicles are “not catching on”, we can ask how much of this is propaganda driven by big business interests who will lose money if they do catch on.

Nonetheless, I think the hype bubble may have burst but the technology is here and here to stay. It may take a decade or two to really take over rather than exploding onto the scene the way some expected.