Tesla Is(n’t) the Answer to Sustainable Development
Note: I previously wrote about why Tesla isn’t sustainable. This isn’t so much a follow-up or update as it is a follow-on piece. But I’ve structured this piece in such a way that you can read them in any order you like and they will still make sense.
Tesla is an easy target in the sustainability space because they have crafted an image dependent upon a message that doesn’t match with how they operate or the realities of their market.
Many replies to my original piece (reflecting the image of Tesla and EVs) went something like this:
“Sure, Tesla might not be sustainable per se. But Tesla’s stated goal is to make EVs ‘cool’ in order to get established car companies to make EVs and car purchasers to buy more EVs. Eventually this will help replace internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving us from climate change. And wouldn’t THAT be more sustainable that what we’re doing now?”
This line of thinking — what I will refer to in this piece as the “tech-behavior assumption” — suffers from all sorts of factual problems, but mostly from a key (mostly false) assumption: that sustainability is principally a technology problem and secondly a consumer behavior problem.
