Where is electrification headed, fifty years after the appearance of the pioneering Enfield 8000?
Last month marked half a century since the start of its production Enfield 8000. The electric city car manufactured in Syros was truly the forerunner of electrification. However, its high cost resulted in the buying public turning their backs on it, despite laudatory articles in the British motoring press. The columnists of the time, however, did not hide their concern. «We may have to wait fifty years before we see electric cars on the roads in sufficient numbers»wrote one of them prophetically.
About forty years later, in the summer of 2013, we were in London, at his presentation BMW i3and we felt like history was really being written at that moment. «We don’t want to be Kodak»said its representatives BMWdemonstrating with the launch of the electric range “i» the proper reflexes to the great change that was just around the corner.
But things did not develop exactly as we experienced them at that moment. Thus, her rumored electric sedan BMWwhich would bear the name “i5” and would be presented immediately after i3, was delayed a whole decade… In fact, the company, which did not want to be “Kodak”, has not yet set a time commitment for its electric transition. Quite the opposite, in fact; has promised to produce our beloved heat engines for as long as there is demand!
But even the companies committed to their passage into the new electric era realized that they will not see progress if they do not offer the necessary product that the consumer public needs. Such is the case with electricity Jeep Avenger, which would also acquire a thermal variant, which would exceptionally be channeled only to the Italian market. In less than a year this exception became the rule, as the thermal Avenger it gradually reached all markets, thereby canceling the entire narrative of the American brand’s electric transition.
Electrification is not available
The cost of electric cars remains, fifty years after its appearance Enfield 8000, the main dissuasive reason that people are not turning to them en masse. Of course, no one can deny the enormous progress that electric vehicles have made at a technological level in the last ten years. But they still have a lot to do, especially in terms of charging infrastructure.
Where will we be at the end of this decade? Unlike our British colleague, we will not risk making predictions. We only wish that electrification ceases to be an option only for the privileged few. But, what do you want, unfortunately, even conventional cars, as they have become more expensive, now appeal to a few.
So maybe instead of a new one “I Move Electric” do we need a new Retirement to get off the road vehicles that pollute tragically more than modern thermals? But who will dare to propose subsidizing the “film”?_ M. S.