Honnold has a large following in the alpine world. That podcast is closing in on 1M views since publication at the end of October. This is just one more small example of how even people who have no particular interest in vehicles or EVs per se are coming around to realize that ICE is a dying technology (Honnold came at this from the solar PV side, and the EV-is-the-future realization flows nicely from that).
Agreed, and the ongoing irreversible transition to EVs is feeding on
very significant network effects, which are slow to start up but effectively unstoppable once in motion. I'd expect a very quick 'phase change' to happen in the next 1-2 years: support for poison gas emitting vehicles will 'melt catastrophically', and the growing negative social stigma attached to owning and operating an ICE vehicle by choice is going to become very significant to the majority of new car buyers.
The result is going to be that even those are going to try and buy EV vehicles who otherwise neutral or hostile to them - just due to peer pressure.
Interesting side note: the 'rolling coal' incidents are also speeding up the EV conversion process: such disruptive behavior is promoted by far right elements of the U.S. political spectrum who are ... rather friendly with historic users of poison gases in other, even darker contexts - and these people are
already stigmatized as out of touch losers. Doubling down on coal and gas is not helping their argument, at all, and will achieve the exact opposite effect.
The law of unintended consequences ...
Put differently: we should think of the EV transition not as a wishful future goal, but that
the EV transition is the Fourth Industrial Revolution which is already in full swing. I also think that effects on economies and on everyday life will be
much more significant than what even we EV-supporters can imagine today.
