In the Before Times, I used to commute to San Francisco by car or train, drop my son at preschool in one part of the city, and take a short ride on an electric scooter to my office in another part of the city.

I really enjoyed the scooter ride, although I can’t defend why I would never purchase a motorcycle but I gleefully navigated a scooter through San Francisco traffic.

So I read with some interest a story in City Monitor called, “The future of transportation is small and electric.” The story is largely about the potential of electric scooters to dramatically reduce pollution in Asia.

“In India, people purchase 17 million motorcycles and scooters every year, and only about three million cars and trucks. The motorcycles can be quite cheap — and getting people to switch to electric can be strongly influenced by subsidies, tax advantages and other promotional policies.”

I’ve only taken a few trips to southeast Asia, but I have always been overwhelmed by the volume of motorcycle and scooter traffic. India, in particular, has some of the worst air pollution in the world due to these vehicles.

“It’s clear that getting gas vehicles off the streets can make a quick difference in air quality. Delhi, India’s capital, discovered this phenomenon in April, just a few weeks into the first Covid-19 lockdown. With most of its 5.5 million motorcycles sidelined, the city, deemed by the World Health Organization to be among the world’s most polluted, experienced something it hadn’t seen in decades — blue skies — and levels of harmful particles in the air fell by close to 60%.”

I look forward to a future world of blue skies and no (or at least much less) air pollution.

A couple of interesting news stories crossed the wire recently, with respect to electric vehicles (H/T Reilly Brennan).

In The Drive, John Voelcker explains all the caveats around GM’s recent announcement targeting an all-electric light duty vehicle fleet by 2035.

“Many people and companies aspire to many things. I aspire to get back in shape after a year of mostly isolation, for instance. Whether it actually happens is a very different story.”

In Harvard Business Review, a trio of academics suggest that automotive manufacturers follow Tesla’s lead and divert a little bit (ahem, a billion dollars each) to building out an electric vehicle charging network.

There’s a fair bit to take issue with in the analysis, starting with this confident but unsupported assertion:

“The reason why consumers still choose Teslas over products like Audi’s eTron or attractive EVs from GM’s Buick, Cadillac, GMC, and Chevy brands is perhaps surprisingly simple. They can drive their Teslas for long distances in full confidence that they will find convenient locations at which to recharge their vehicle.”

But the article raises a question that seems obvious but hadn’t occurred to me (at least not in any deep way) — why don’t gas stations install electric charging units?

The HBR article makes passing mention of this:

“Many existing fossil fuel energy firms, for example, have gas station assets that will eventually become stranded and could be repurposed for electric vehicles.”

But the analysis doesn’t go much deeper than that.

This is a question that charging network startups like Blink must think about constantly.

For sure, the economics are different. Charging cars takes much longer, so vehicle turnover is much lower. Gas stations are often affiliated with oil extraction companies, which might complicate adding electric power stations connected to the normal grid. Probably there are permitting issues.

But none of these seem insurmountable, especially as electric vehicle sales begin to increase and seem poised to explode.

And yet…I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gas station with electric charging bays. So what’s the story?