How to solve ‘range anxiety’

In ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, Sherlock Holmes mentions ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. ‘But the dog did nothing in the night-time,’ argues Inspector Gregory. ‘That was the curious incident,’ replies Holmes.

Along with Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘Unknown unknowns’, this is perhaps the most famous example of what you might call ‘perceptual asymmetry’. We mostly act instinctively based on what is salient, giving little thought to what is easily overlooked.

It is hence surprisingly easy to change what people do simply by changing what they pay attention to. A magnificent example of this is the London Overground, one of the most cost-effective infrastructure projects ever undertaken, though the greater part of its success was achieved not with steel and concrete, but pixels and ink. Around 95 per cent of the track had existed for a century, but it was designated as a railway, not as a Tube line. Since most Londoners, in their solipsistic way, never consider surface rail as an option for short journeys, few had any conception that these lines or stations existed. By cannily pretending that these trains were part of the Tube network, and adding the routes to the Tube map, the invisible was made visible – and hence popular. The Overground now carries more passengers than the Elizabeth line, at about 3 per cent of the latter’s £20 billion construction cost.

I believe a similar issue – one of simple visibility – also applies to electric cars. As you are reading this, thousands of the world’s cleverest people are spending billions to increase the range of electric car batteries. The reason for this is to reduce a phenomenon called ‘range anxiety’. I suggest that it might be a lot cheaper to reduce anxiety than it is to increase range.