Recently Ford Motor Company announced that it was canceling its plans to build a large, all-electric SUV. It is just one more indication that the push to go all-electric is slowing down.

There are, of course, reasons for this–and it has to do primarily with cost and reliability issues.

Having everything become electric sounds good from an environmental perspective. But, now, people are coming to grips with how much that will cost–and the fact that it may not be as reliable as advertised.

National Grid is now asking for a big rate increase before the Public Service Commission–much of it related to increasing the capacity for the grid to handle new renewable energy sources as well as projected increases in electrical demand related to more electric vehicle use. The public is just now realizing how much all of this is going to cost.

I think, though, that the cooling fervor for electric vehicles (EV’s) has also been driven by events – like the multiweek shutdown of the electric grid in Houston after a big hurricane. Electric vehicles don’t work very well when there is no electricity to charge the battery.

One of the other major weaknesses in electricity remains the problem of storage. Companies are now making bigger batteries that can store more electricity, but most batteries still run out of juice after a few hours. What happens when the grid is down for a few days?

All of this seems to be hypothetical until it happens to you…and then people begin to change their thinking.

You cannot dispute that there are advantages to EV’s especially in their simplicity. They have many fewer moving parts than a regular car… no pistons, valves, transmissions, and drive chains to break down. Their energy source, the battery and its dependence on the grid, is their weak point…the rest of what makes them run is quite efficient.

Yet, the bottom line, I guess, is that people tend to be practical. So, if you offer them something like a hybrid vehicle, which can run on electricity as well as gas, it is an option they may well take.

In any case, you can’t force energy decisions by just passing laws in Albany or Washington that require energy conversions by a certain date, deadlines which are then not met.

New discoveries will need to be made as to how electricity is generated and stored. My hope is that a new technology can be developed to control nuclear fusion, which would have great advantages over our current nuclear fission technology.

In the meantime, we will need a mix of energy fuels. Going all-electric is slowing down.

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident.