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Why Do People Resist New Technology Like Electric Vehicles?
David Shultz
David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.
Last week California air regulators voted to ban all new internal combustion car sales starting in 2035. The news was met with a predictable mix of responses: Some lauded the decision as forward-thinking and environmentally responsible; others saw it as government overreach–an attack on consumer freedom and the free market.
Whether the arguments against EVs are in good faith or not (they’re often not), the fact remains that this burgeoning technology has been met with fierce resistance since Teslas started hitting the road back in 2008. It’s easy to find examples of people keying EVs, rolling coal to spite them or blocking chargers with gas-powered cars.
A part of human nature is naturally resistant to change and to the unknown. It has served us well evolutionarily over the past 200,000 years. Tradition keeps us safe when it comes to eating the right wild berries or choosing a route to the next town. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there were people in the Roman Empire spreading myths about how using indoor plumbing makes your sword hand weak, or that riding in a chariot would make your uterus fall out. Even without political tribalism and pressure from the fossil fuel industry, new tech can be divisive.
Rosabeth M. Kanter, a professor of business at Harvard Business School, who studies these ideas, says the number one reason people resist change is that they fear a loss of control over their lives. This may explain why the ban on new gas cars in California has faced some backlash.
“For people who are feeling like life is slipping out of their control–that sinister forces are pushing them around–they're likely to not want to be forced into making a change,” says Kanter. Whether or not the state could have accomplished the same goal without a mandate is debatable, but due to the California Air Resources Board’s successful history of driving national policy with ambitious state-level laws, it’s not surprising they chose to take that risk.
However, Kanter also notes that plenty of new tech innovations have been welcomed with open arms. Take the smartphone, for instance. Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in 2007. By 2017, 77% of Americans owned a smartphone. Cars, of course, were always going to be slower transition—after all, the lifecycle of a car is at least three or four times as long as that of a smartphone. But why has there been so much cultural resistance to the growing EV market share?
The biggest and most obvious answer is cost. Smartphones aren’t cheap, but there’s a big difference between $700 and $70,000. The current batch of EVs on the road are simply too expensive for the average person to afford. Knowing that demand would outstrip initial manufacturing capacity, EV makers have chosen to offer luxury models first in order to make as much money as possible while ramping up production. And while legacy OEMs are beginning to enter the scene and change this dynamic, we’re still early in this story and costs are still extremely high.
Kanter says that to get consumers to adopt new tech, the transition has to be smooth. It has to be easy. Remember taking your flip phone to a Verizon or AT&T and trading it in for a smartphone? These companies made it simple and offered excellent financing plans–just a few extra dollars added to your bill every month. And while there are about a thousand different EV rebates and incentives on offer (see Wednesday’s newsletter) finding and understanding how to apply these deals is a whole lot harder than trading in a Motorola Razr for an iPhone.
Regarding smooth transitions: Charging infrastructure remains another huge impediment. While EV range anxiety is perceived to be much more of an issue than it actually is, the fact remains that America’s charging infrastructure is inadequate–especially rural areas in the middle of the country. If California wants to get everyone in an EV as quickly as possible, the state will need to make EV charging as seamless as gassing up.
Another thing Kanter says made the transition to smartphones different from EVs and other technology. New phones offered immediate and obvious benefits. Maps and internet access alone would’ve sold the devices. They also connected customers to networks that were pretty much inaccessible without the device. Nobody wants to miss out on the group chat drama. “The minute they see things that are benefits for themselves, you don't have to argue with them anymore,” says Kanter. “The benefits are right there in front of them.”
The benefits of electric vehicles, on the other hand, are more subtle or even existential. Calculating the cost of recharging the vehicle or the cost per mile of driving almost requires some familiarity with high-school physics. While the math isn’t necessarily complex or difficult, it’s new and foreign enough to present a barrier. Yes, it’s usually cheaper per mile to drive an EV than to fill up with gas, but to figure that out you have to know what a kilowatt hour is and how many your car consumes per mile of travel and how much electricity costs per kilowatt hour. Climate benefits only really apply at a society- and perhaps planetary level.
Of course you have this entire debate playing out against a climate in which batteries and gasoline have somehow become political footballs. If “opposing any policy from the other side” remains de rigueur in Washington, EV adoption will be slowed by politics…until the transition is truly seamless and the benefits are impossible to ignore.
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David Shultz
David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.
Standing Together Through the Flames
12:48 PM | January 10, 2025
🔦 Spotlight
To our Los Angeles family,
This week’s wildfires have brought immense pain and hardship to our beloved city. Many of our friends, neighbors, and colleagues have faced evacuations, power outages, and the devastating loss of homes and livelihoods. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by this tragedy.
At dot.LA, we want to express our deepest sympathy to those suffering in this moment. We see your resilience and stand with you during this challenging time. This community has always been defined by its strength and compassion, and now is the time to come together in support.
If You or Someone You Know Has Been Impacted, Resources Are Available:
Evacuation Shelters:
- Calvary Community Church: 5495 Via Rocas, Westlake Village, CA 91362
- Ritchie Valens Recreation Center: 10736 Laurel Canyon Blvd., Pacoima, CA 91331
- Pan Pacific Recreational Center: 7600 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036
- Westwood Recreation Center: 1350 Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025
- Pasadena Civic Auditorium: 300 East Green Street, Pasadena, CA 91101
- Pomona Fairplex: 1101 W McKinley Ave, Pomona, CA 91768
- Stoner Recreation Center: 1835 Stoner Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90025
Animal Shelters:
Small Animals:
- Agoura Animal Care Center: 29525 Agoura Rd, Agoura Hills, CA 91301
- Baldwin Park Animal Care Center: 4275 Elton St, Baldwin Park, CA 91706
- Carson Animal Care Center: 216 W Victoria St, Gardena, CA 90248
- Downey Animal Care Center: 11258 Garfield Ave, Downey, CA 90242
- Lancaster Animal Care Center: 5210 W Ave I, Lancaster, CA 93536
- Palmdale Animal Care Center: 38550 Sierra Hwy, Palmdale, CA 93550
Large Animals:
- Pomona Fairplex: 1101 W McKinley Ave, Pomona
- Industry Hills Expo: 16200 Temple Ave, City of Industry, CA 91744
- Antelope Valley Fair: 2551 W Avenue H, Lancaster, CA 93536
- Los Angeles Equestrian Center: 480 W Riverside Dr, Burbank, CA 91506
- Pierce College Equestrian Center: 7100 El Rancho Dr, Woodland Hills, CA 91371
Disaster Relief Information:
- LA County Assessor: Information for property owners and FAQs about disaster relief.
Mental Health Support:
- Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health: Crisis counseling and support for those affected. Access services through their website or call their hotline at (800) 854-7771.
Temporary Housing Support:
- Airbnb: In partnership with 211 LA, offering free temporary housing for displaced residents. Spaces are limited; complete the form to be notified of availability.
Transportation Support:
- Uber: Use promo code WILDFIRE25 for 2 free rides up to $40 each to/from active shelters.
- Lyft: Code CAFIRERELIEF25 offers 2 rides up to $25 each for up to 500 riders, valid until 1/15.
- Metro: Fare collection is suspended systemwide.
Staying Informed:
- Watch Duty App: Provides real-time wildfire tracking, evacuation warnings, and updates.
- Los Angeles Fire Department Alerts: Visit their website for the latest information on fire status and safety guidelines.
Safety Precautions:
- Ready, Set, Go!: Personal Wildfire Action Plan by the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
To those in our community who are volunteering, donating, or offering aid in any form—thank you. Your efforts embody the spirit of LA: strong, compassionate, and unstoppable.
At dot.LA, we’re committed to amplifying stories of resilience and support. If you’ve seen inspiring acts of kindness or have resources to share, please let us know. Together, we can shine a light on the incredible ways this community is stepping up during these trying times.
In the days ahead, let’s hold tight to the bonds that unite us and remember that we are stronger together. The fires may scar the land, but they cannot dim the collective spirit of Los Angeles.
We’re here for you, and we’re with you.
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How Will LA Look in 2028? A Look at the City's Plan To Embrace Transformational Tech
07:00 AM | January 02, 2023
Midjourney/Dall-E
It’s 8 a.m. on a Monday morning. I wave at the contact-free traffic sensor and the cars stop so I can cross. A delivery robot zooms past bringing cold brew and breakfast burritos to neighbors, while someone activates a micromobility electric scooter and glides off down a side street. An autonomous vehicle on a trial run pauses at the stop sign, guided by Global Positioning System satellites more than 12,000 miles overhead. A smart pole tracks air quality at the intersection and reports back to the data science team at City Hall.
At the “smart” bus stop I press a button and an AI swiftly triangulates incoming Metro Los Angeles GIS (Geographic Information System) data before a synthesized voice reads out wait times. I jump on the bus when it arrives, using my Tap card to pay the fare and grab a seat, plugging my charger into the (under seat) USB port. Thanks to the bus’s persistent WiFi signal en route, I pull up the latest technology report from the Harvard Business Review, courtesy of the L.A. Public Library, and start making notes.
Twenty minutes later and I'm the first one walking into my co-working space. As soon as I swipe my entry card the centralized system detects a change in the motion sensor network. It then turns on the lights, ambient music, and HVAC (heating, ventilation and AC) , ensuring the building remains energy efficient and to code when unoccupied.
Midjourney/Dall-E
The 2028 Plan
In December 2020, when the SmartLA 2028 city plan was released by (the now former) Mayor Garcetti’s office, this sort of scenario felt far-off.
But it’s all there in the document: a plan to turn L.A. from reliance on fossil fuels and cars and into a data-driven connected city, which addresses the digital divide and brings fresh ideas, including telehealth, clean tech and a switch to mass transit.
What no one knew, when they started working on this plan back in 2019, was a global pandemic was on its way. It took that pandemic to throw everyone into a digital-ready future earlier than (everyone) expected. But here we are.
“Throughout the crisis, digital tools have emerged as a critical lifeline for our society,” notes the SmartLA 2028 city plan. “Enabling contact-free essential services, accelerated medical solutions, artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted policy making, protest coordination through social media, real-time community engagement and a scale and pace of innovation previously unthinkable.”
LA and the Future of Everything
Let’s back up a moment, to the 1950s when L.A. first looked like The Future to the rest of the world.
Post-war industries flourished here. The Federal-Aid Highway Act (1956) ushered in the freeway system and cars poured off the manufacturing lots. Cold War NASA missions heralded an aerospace boom. The Case Study House Program showcased prefabricated components and modern appliances. Bold sci-fi style buildings such as The Chemosphere House (1960) and LAX’s Theme Building (1961) materialized on the landscape. L.A. County’s population tripled between 1940 (2.7 million) to over 6 million by 1960.
In 2023, our population is now north of 10 million and, as a result, this new L.A. Future plan is less about appearances, and more about a skillful cloud-based hyper-connectivity providing a vast mesh of advanced technologies which aim to make this city sustainable, livable and equitable for all.
Sure, we’ve got Big Tech from Up North on our doorstep. The FAANG companies (Facebook, Apple etc.) have carved out nearly 6 million square footage of L.A. westside alone, and obviously they contribute massively to our economy. But a fairer L.A. will depend less on unicorns (startups with a $1 billion valuation before public listing) and more on a needs-based cohesive approach to innovation, drawing on the best resources from academic institutions, updating local government departments across the board, and bringing both the venture capital community and its well-funded startups into alliance with real-world requirements.
Along these lines, Miki Reynolds, CEO and co-founder of Grid110, the L.A. tech hub, wants to ensure a spirit of egalitarianism is carried through into L.A.’s startups.
"The L.A. startup scene is more than just Venice and Santa Monica," says Reynolds, who prefers a cityscape and initially headquartered Grid110 in DTLA as a result. "Since our inception, we've supported 250 companies who have raised over $90M in investment capital. But I'm even more proud to say 70 % of our portfolio companies have founders who are women and 75% are founders of color. L.A. is an incredibly rich and diverse city - we need to reflect that in our emerging technology."
A welcome sign is that many L.A. technology companies have joined PledgeLA, an industry-wide initiative to make the tech sector accountable to its communities, establishing goals around diversity and social impact, and recording their progress.
Midjourney/Dall-E
Technology For Good
So how will L.A. ensure its tech-enabled future is providing value for all? The SmartLA 2028 city plan laid out some bold objectives, with measurable outcomes including a 10% reduction in travel time by utilizing data from 40,000 loop detectors across 4,500 connected intersections and annual savings of $3 million through converting over 165,000 street lamps to LED and connecting them to a dashboard to streamline maintenance and track outages.
The MyLA311 site and mobile app allow Angelenos a simple-to-use interface to city services. It's relatively unsophisticated in terms of UX (user experience) and design, but it works because it was created with equity in mind so everyone can use it. If you need to report a pothole, civic safety issue, schedule pick-up of bulky items or find the nearest municipal building or park, it’s all there - and available in English, Spanish, Korean, Armenian and Chinese (simplified and traditional) to reflect our diverse communities.
MyLA311 would not have been possible, however, without the Los Angeles Open Data project. This is the result of over 7 years of capturing, standardizing, centralizing and then analyzing vast amounts of city data - from almost every department - transportation, sanitation, public safety (crime stats), housing, infrastructure and health (most notably COVID-19 transmission data).
The Los Angeles Open Data’s main function is to provide data and analysis support to city programs which aim to realize high-value community outcomes by providing policy recommendations. Simply put - if you don’t know where you’re starting from (base line), how will you know if a program is a success?
But it’s also entirely open and accountable to the public too. As a result, Angelenos can now drill down to find out more on hyperlocal data sets which provide meaning to them. For example, a team scraped data on Black-owned businesses in L.A. and compiled a “story map” here, so people can choose to spend money within their communities and support causes most meaningful to them.
This data also powers ideas which have emerged from the Innovation and Performance Commission (IPC), an open forum for city employees to propose pilot projects which can receive allocations from a $1 million fund. According to the SmartLA 2028 report, “Since its inception in 2016, over 40 projects have been funded, including a mobile nurse practitioner unit that reduces emergency room visits, employee payroll app that reduces paper and staff resources, and 3D printers for rapid prototyping of public works projects.”
Connectivity Access
All these initiatives are vital to the running of a “smart city” - but what’s the use if a significant proportion of the population doesn’t have access to digital connectivity?
This situation was exacerbated by the pandemic and many agencies stepped up to close up the digital divide, including Get Connected Los Angeles, where the city partnered with the California Emerging Technology Fund and EveryoneOn to help Angelenos get access to computers, digital literary services and low-cost internet connectivity.
The Los Angeles County Library extended their Wi-Fi service to over 60 of its local branch parking structures so locals could “park and connect” (or “sit and connect” at nearby outdoor seating) to pick up email, do homework, or carry out job searches. While the Los Angeles Public Library rolled out its Tech2go Hotspot Loan to library card holders in good standing and re-trained staff to act as “cybernauts” and offer technology assistance.
Imagining the Future
With all these tech-future equitable concepts in place, what will L.A. look like in 2028 when the world arrives on our doorstep for the Olympics?
At first glance - and this is no bad thing - it might not look that different at all, because no new construction/venues will be built, according to the official Games Plan. We have enough facilities to host the Games. In a bid for sustainability and imaginative adaptive reuse, the plan is clear on that score.
But what will be entirely revolutionary is the technologically-based infrastructure enabling everyone to get around, connect, find out what’s going on, and enjoy the sporting and cultural events. As 15,000 athletes arrive at LAX they’ll take the automated people mover to the Metro and end up at the Olympic Village (UCLA) in no time. With the smart city layer in place, anything is possible - augmented reality glasses overlaying real-time sports scores, holograms of athletes participating in community-led training sessions, multi-lingual robots acting as guides and scanning tickets at turnstiles.
It all starts with the data - and L.A. is already way ahead of the game on that score.
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S.C. Stuart
S.C. Stuart is a foreign correspondent (ELLE China, Esquire Latin America), Contributing Writer at Ziff Davis PCMag, and consults as a futurist for Hollywood Studios. Previously, S.C. was the head of digital at Hearst Magazines International while serving as a Non-Executive Director, UK Trade & Investment (US) and Digital Advisor at The Smithsonian.
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