February 28th 2023 - Electric Dreams and Internal Combustion Reality

Croatia over the weekend experienced very cold weather. Extensive snowfall and strong winds affected mountainous region of Lika, including A1 Motorway, main road that connect capital of Zagreb with southern region of Dalmatia. The road had to be closed on Sunday evening and it happened in rather unfortunate moments, with traffic slightly increased due to soccer match between GNK Dinamo Zagreb and HNK Hajduk Split and visiting fans returning from Zagreb to Split. As a result, hundreds of motorists got stranded in front of Sv. Rok tunnel and had to seek shelter and accommodation in various towns of Lika.

This wasn’t first such events, since major road communications in Croatia, due to specifics of its geography, is often at the mercy of elements. What made this event slightly different were some of the reactions among Croatians at social media, including debates what can be done to prevent such events in the future. Some of those debates started to revolve around what could happen in next decade or two, when new European Union regulations would ultimately mandate that only electric vehicles use A1 Motorway.

Present-day experiences suggest that such scenario might result in something rather unpleasant. Electric vehicles which are currently used on Croatian roads are in terms of efficiency and reliability are inferior to vehicles still using internal combustion engines. They are very impractical for long distance travel, require too much infrastructure which still hasn’t been built nor could withstand demand for electricity when hundreds of thousands of internal combustion vehicles get replaced. Furthermore, electric vehicles are notorious for performing badly under low temperature conditions, exactly those that occurred on Sunday.

The debate between EV enthusiasts and environmentalists and sceptics that believe that internal combustion still have a role to play turned very lively. The former maintain that the new technology would ultimately prevail and that better electric engines and energy storage would arrive shortly and solve such problems. The latter claim that insistence on electric cars, at least according to EU-mandated deadlines, would lead to combination of financial and logistical disaster.

The arguments of sceptics look rather convincing in light of many claims about new wonders EV technology looking extremely far-fetched. An example can be found in Croatian capital of Zagreb, where few years earlier media claimed that Mate Rimac, Croatian innovator and entrepreneur known for his revolutionary Nevera sports car, would by 2024 provide city with the fleet of electric robot taxi vehicles. This vision, which looked like something out of Cyberpunk 2077, isn’t any closer to reality than it was few years ago. Actually, financial and energy issues caused by geopolitical and global economic complications are likely to put Zagreb robot taxis in not so foreseeable future.

In the meantime, some sort of common sense approach could be found in a compromise between electric and internal combustion engine cars. Hybrid models that try to achieve best of both worlds could be used both for city travel and long distance travels. This wouldn’t be without precedent. For much of 19th and in first decades of 20th Century it wasn’t that uncommon for steamships to have sails and use them as backup when steam engine failed for one reason or another. Similar kind of practice could serve motorists very well in decades to come.

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