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Insurance Thought Leadership
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We Need to Rethink the Future of Cars
Paul Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of ITL
When I moved my older daughter to Washington, DC, a year ago, we piled all her worldly possessions into a 16-foot truck and made the 2,982-mile trip from northern California in 72 hours. While we weren't exactly a Formula 1 pit crew when we refueled, we could fill up the tank and get on the road again for the next 400 miles in 10 minutes.?
Now imagine how this might look in 25 years in an all-electric future if she returns the favor and moves me into a retirement home. It could take an hour or more to recharge a battery big enough to move a truck hundreds of miles. My daughter is great company, and all, but we were already getting plenty of together time and didn't need to be sitting across from each other at a recharging station.?
And trucks don't really lend themselves to electrification, anyway. Those using internal combustion engines (ICEs) are already plenty heavy -- even without my daughter's 20 boxes of books -- and the huge batteries needed to move all that weight make EVs far heavier. That means less range, which means more frequent recharging, which means even more time on a plastic chair at the recharging station, drinking bad coffee.?
领英推荐
While many people have assumed that EVs would steadily take market share, more and more rapidly, until ICE vehicles disappeared, that thinking was based on the idea that EVs could be a one-for-one replacement for ICEs. But mulling the before and after versions of a cross-country moving trip made me realize that the path to the future may not be as straightforward as I thought, and recent trends support that new thinking -- sales of hybrids are surging, while the growth for EVs is slowing.
The realization comes as two electric scooter companies have filed for bankruptcy and in the wake of the problems at Cruise that have set back the move toward autonomous vehicles, so this seems like a good time to take a broad look at the future of transportation. Auto insurers, among many others, need to get the transition to the electric future right.?
This Week's Thought Leadership Content
Athena Intelligence, Voice of the Acre?
10 个月Posted to Climate change Professionals. While I was a little disappointed that he didn't mention Athena's prefire probabilistic projections that can help an insurer to select lower risks and reserve more accurately, overall, a well thought out piece. Two thoughts - First, I loved his comment about how nature can and does come back - "In recent weeks, a 150-year-old banyan tree that was damaged in the Lahaina fire, a well-known and beloved landmark, began to sprout new green leaves.?In the face of devastation, nature is remarkably resilient and adaptive. Greater wildfire resilience will require a mix of prevention, technology, education and investment." Second, while he highlights public health, the cost of retrofitting structures and reducing risks, he doesn't mention the biggest economic impact. Over a 7 year period, most communities hit by consequential wildfire see an economic loss of multiples of their insurance payouts and government grants. This tends to be hidden in the early years as rebuilding causes a construction boom. These large community losses are the driver for Athena's team to work with utilities, municipalities and communities on understanding and reducing wildfire risk. Thanks Tom for a nice article.