Collectivism And The Electric Car

This week’s episode of the Blindboy Podcast focused on individualism vs collectivism in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, demonstrating that collectivist societies have long taken the approach of acting for the greater good.

Recounting a recent study by the University of Kent, he gave the example of people in Japan uniformly wearing face masks when they are unwell to protect those around them – while in highly capitalist and individualist societies like America, being asked to wear a mask during the current pandemic can be seen as an affront to one’s way of life for some people.

This poses an interesting question about the role that electric vehicles (EVs) can play in overcoming neo-capitalism and enabling society to adopt a more collectivistic attitude towards public health, and addressing the ecological consequences of our daily actions.

The car as a symbol of individualism

It is easy to see that the car has long been an icon of individualism – something that is used to express a person’s taste in design, represent their social status, and act as a physical metal suit of armour used to protect the occupants.

Yet, while it is common knowledge that internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles are responsible for 28% of all emissions worldwide, we readily turn a blind eye to the 500,000 early and avoidable deaths in the EU alone each year that result from air pollution, or the oil spills that decimate wildlife and render regions uninhabitable, in order to satiate our desire to get from A to B with as little fuss as possible.

The advertising for these vehicles will often highlight the increased safety of the driver and other occupants, while neglecting to recognise the rise in cyclist and pedestrian deaths resulting directly from SUV and Crossover adoption. They protect you, the driver – the individualist.

Here too, the emissions created by ICEs may also be compared to the Covid-19 pandemic. Their invisibility makes them all the more insidious and, painfully, easier to ignore.

It is a sad indictment of marketing and advertising that these vehicles were only created to fill a niche when manufacturers had reached sales saturation. These needed to create a reason for people to buy them, like the creation of the iPad Mini – an unnecessary innovation that only represented compromise to those who bought them, but were hoodwinked and seduced by slick promotional campaigns.

“Between 2010-2018 SUVs increased emissions by 700 megatonnes of CO2 - more than the yearly total emissions of the UK and the Netherlands combined”

Electric car collectivism

Like any emerging technology, the electric car has a fervent and active community behind it, driven by an interest in innovation and a desire to be altruistic in the face of the climate crisis.

This community uses word-of-mouth to promote the adoption of EVs and overcome the common myths that have been propagated by oil companies and those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo (see ICCRA).

Not only does this community try to convert people to the cause, but is also a self-sustaining collectivist group working to support one another. Take, for example, Zap Map.

On the outside this is simply a tool to find your nearest charging point and to plot your journey. Yet within the app, users are actively sharing their experiences with one another for a collective benefit. Is the charge point still free to use? Is it down for maintenance? How fast will this one charge your particular car?

The collective hive mind seeks to answer these questions and share knowledge to help all users experience the same benefits. This increases ease-of-use, and counteracts the dissenting actions of self-interested parties who are focused on selling polluting ICEs due to their greater profitability, and the ability to sell you on the myth of hybrids before finally selling you a zero-emission, fully-electric vehicle once the climate has already passed the tipping point.

This can be seen in action in Ireland today, where a major industry body representing Irish car dealers is lobbying the government to delay climate action by a decade and engaging in a dis-information campaign against electric cars in order to increase their profit margins.

Electric car mindfulness

Mindfulness is an essential aspect of collectivism – the opportunity to take stock and consider the role that you play in society, and how your actions impact those around you.

When arriving at a petrol or diesel pump on a garage forecourt, the average driver will never consider the ecological consequences of the fuel that they are procuring – the pollution from identifying and drilling wells, the emissions created to extract, transport, refine that oil, and the greenhouse gases generated in delivering the fuel from the refinery to the consumer.

Typically the driver is more focused on the financial implications to them as they watch the cost rise with each pulse of the pump.

In fact, it is becoming commonplace that retired batteries from electric cars can be installed to store energy from solar or wind power at home – an act of recycling that reduces waste and ensures that progress does not come at a cost. Your old battery is used to help charge your new one.

As EV technology has advanced, we are even now seeing that the energy in an EV – after all, it is essentially a large battery on wheels – can also be used to power the homes that they are plugged into.

Not only can this provide power during a storm or a power outage, but it can also ensure that the owner is using their energy mindfully – using it for energy-intense activities such as heating water for a hot bath, and then recharging their car during off-peak hours to minimise impact on the national grid.

Defeating capitalism through collectivism

Where capitalism is the predominant ideology, it follows that individualism takes root, and in such societies we distinguish ourselves from those around us through what we consume – with our cars being a large representation of our personality and social standing.

Buying the latest and greatest model of car is seen by some as a model for success, and an outward badge of honour – although this is to the great detriment of our global ecology, with the amount of metal, plastic and oil required to produce each new vehicle.

It could be considered, then, that the act of converting your current ICE into an EV might be an act of collectivist rebellion – breaking the cycle of capitalism to the benefit of those around you, while also doing your bit for the planet.

It is incredibly feasible to remove the polluting engine, exhaust system, gearbox and petrol/diesel tank from your car and replace them with batteries and electric motors that can be run from renewable energy.

As cars have become more complex in recent years – even before the EV revolution – consumers became ever more beholden to manufacturers to fix technical and engineering errors, including those resulting from in-build obsolesce or where industry standards were being circumvented, such as VW’s Dieselgate.

This created a financial bond between the consumer and the manufacturer that could not be broken.

However, the advent of EV conversion has been propelled by the use of open-source research, with mechanics working to understand (and break) the software and hardwear of electric vehicles.

In this way, they are exchanging knowledge for the collective benefit of society, making the latest innovations freely available to one another without expecting any financial gain in return – safe in the knowledge that their work and insights will make the world better.

In this way, electric vehicles are not just disruptive in the way that they are reducing emissions to improve public health and mediate anthropological impact on the climate, but they also represent the opportunity to break the grip of capitalism and individualism for the betterment of society.

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