Tesla Have Served an Important Purpose: They Made Electricity Cool

Electric cars look here to stay, whether you like it or not, folks. Fossil fuels are getting more and more negative press by the day; in fact it's gotten to the point where you're basically labelled as Satan if you buy a diesel car in 2017.

Arguably though, that's the right direction. Us petrolheads do not want to accept change, because we love our combustion engines too much. I don't think I'm wrong in saying that the engine itself was probably what got over 90% of us into cars in the first place. So it should come as no surprise, then, that some people really hate electric cars.

You only have to go to any car forum to see how much the community quite literally takes a dump on anything electric, regardless of how technically impressive the vehicles are. They'll be quick to point out, for example, that the electricity is generated from fossil fuels anyway, so it doesn't make a difference.

Alas, that simply isn't true anymore.

I'll admit it's a bit geographically dependant, but a lot of Western countries these days are producing a considerable amount of their electricity from renewable sources. The UK, for example, is on the brink of cutting out coal altogether, which is amazing. Not many people know this though, because at the end of the day, it's a bit boring. To the average person, so long as they have their power, they aren't going to care how it was generated. Long story short, though, electric cars in general will be a lot greener than ICE cars in 2017.

But that ignores another fundamental problem with electric cars: they're so, so weird. Does anyone remember the G-Wiz? It was a horrible little Tupperware box that basically kick-started the negative electric car stereotype.

Since then though, electric car manufacturers seemed to have an obsession with making electric cars stand-out and plain awkward to the eye. I get they were trying to make their cutting-edge technology stand out from the dinosaurs of the road, but you're never going to get people to mass adopt electric when you have cars looking like the Peugeot iON.

However, Tesla rocked up to the scene in 2012 with the Model S, their first mass-produced car. And would you take a look at it! Lo and behold, it looks normal. It looks like a regular car that I wouldn't be embarrassed to drive. The polished driving experience and good battery performance helps no doubt, but I'm convinced its normality is primarily the reason why Tesla is now by far the biggest player in the electric car industry.

By making the styling mainstream but modern, you're going to attract mainstream buyers. And when you get normal people buying these things, you start to find electric cars are no longer being considered left-field and quirky - they're now a legitimate alternative way to power your pride and joy.

In the era of weird cars, I thought electricity was never going to catch on. But now we see people lining up to place $1,000 deposits on a Tesla they won't even get for a year just goes to show how much things have changed. It's still going to take work to convince the hardcore petrolheads, but as far as I'm concerned, I welcome our electric overlords into the ongoing motoring history book.