Moody Monday: Change

Back in the late 1970's early 1980's gasoline prices went up significantly, I can still remember the first time I paid more than $1 a gallon, at the Gulf station at US1 and Knox McRae in Titusville, Florida (the last I knew there was a bank on that corner.) I was driving a massive Oldsmobile, that was traded on a smaller one, that still only got about 25 miles to the gallon on the open road.  I was driving down Interstate 4 in Orlando one evening, and a VW Rabbit Diesel passed me, and I thought, he is getting 50 miles to the gallon and he passed me. That looks like fun. I stopped at a VW dealer on my way home.  And another one the next afternoon, and I bought a diesel powered VW.  

People hated the diesel.  It sounded funny, and if you put your foot to the floor it would put out a puff of black smoke (I enjoyed doing that if someone was driving to close behind.) GM attempted to sell diesels,  Issuzu was probably the most successful.  

I loved the little car.  It was a little slow to get going, but once I got it wound up it would go 80 miles an hour, and get 50 miles to the gallon.  And people hated it, because it was different, it was change.   

I am getting a steady stream of postings on FB of people who hate the idea of an electric car.  Electric cars are different, they are change.  They sound different, they work differently and people are hating on them.  

I think electric cars are here to stay.  They are fast, in fact the Ferrari pictured above is a rechargeable electric. Electric motors have an advantage on acceleration coming up to full speed almost instantaneously.  Hydro, wind, geothermal, electricity can be very clean and renewable. 

People hate change, they always have.  One of my grandfathers farmed with a team of horses until World War II, he had a dozen reasons why he hated tractors.  Why he resisted change. 

Change is inevitable, how we react to it is up to us.