Electric car breakthrough may be seen at CES

The North American International Auto Show, a.k.a. the Detroit auto show, will open to the public in a little more than two weeks. It is usually an important occasion, with automakers unveiling products geared for the continental marketplace.

But more than a week earlier — next week, in fact — there will be a show in Las Vegas that I suspect will overshadow Detroit. Some heavy hitters are lining up to make announcements at CES 2016, previously known as the Consumer Electronic Show.

For instance, General Motors’ CEO Mary Barra is planning to deliver a major address next Wednesday and is expected to talk about Chevrolet and the future of personal mobility. While this will be interesting, I’m sure, I doubt it will be a bombshell — although why she would choose to make whatever announcement she’s planning to make in Vegas rather than Detroit is intriguing.

What could very well turn out to be a bombshell, however, is this.

There is, in the words of a friend of mine, a stealth electric car company out there called Faraday Future (FF). I understand it is being bankrolled by a wealthy Chinese entrepreneur, the Richard Branson of China, whose name I do not know, to the tune of well over $2 billion.

FF is based in Los Angeles and many of its management team and employees previously worked for Tesla. They plan to introduce their car at CES on Monday.

Now, yet another electric car is not going to make much of a splash. Everybody’s got one. Or two. So what is going to make this one different?

I am told there is a distinct possibility that there has been a break- through, that one of the chief reasons electric cars haven’t caught on to the extent their fans had expected is (or has been) the length of time required to replenish the juice in the batteries powering the automobile.

It’s one thing to go home at night and plug in the car and have it powered up and ready to go the next morning. It’s another thing to go to the Maritimes on vacation and have to spend much of the time along the way hanging around recharging stations. I am one of many people, for instance, who will only consider an electric car if and when I can “refuel” in the same amount of time it takes me to pump in a tankful of gasoline.

So, is the “breakthrough” going to be a fast-charging battery? One that can be juiced to the limit in — say — five minutes? If that’s the case, it will be headlines.

Of course, it could be none of that. Whatever, it’s interesting that so much of this is happening at a technological and electronic trade show and not at Detroit. Which makes you wonder about the future of auto shows. Although a report on curbing urban sprawl by former Toronto mayor David Crombie was cited as a major reason the Ontario government put a hold on a new commuter highway connecting northern Vaughan with Milton, I suggest it was really the Paris climate conference.

I can just hear the conversation in the Premier’s office: “How can we come back from a meeting where a) everybody agreed to put in place policies to reduce the use of fossil fuels and b) we continue planning to build a new super highway that could potentially increase the use of fossil fuels. Let’s put that highway on hold (which is code for cancelling it).”

In 25 years, it’s possible that just about everybody will be driving electric or fuel-cell vehicles. But congestion will still be a problem. A new highway could have alleviated some of it.

We’ve all heard of Newton’s third law, that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction? By solving one problem, you create another? That’s what happened at Queen’s Park the other day. nmcdonald@thestar.ca