Here we go again. Remember when you said one of the new FCA vehicles lacked capacity and I was left scratching my head thinking interior volume instead of production line throughput? Well, I was ready to disagree about tracking an EV. I was thinking tracking in the bloodhound sense of the word, and not in the R/T (Road and Track) definition.
I haven't brought this up because I try to avoid being political, but battery electric vehicles are very easy to track. I use the word "track" in the sense that big brother is my copilot. Right now just a few municipalities in the USA are implementing geo-fencing to keep their own fleet vehicles out of areas due to poor air quality. They don't want some diesel truck idling away stinking up a neighborhood. The truth is with modern diesels meeting the latest EPA mandates and "near zero" natural gas engines, a constant diesel odor is mostly a thing of the past. (Except out here in the Rolling Coal Central School District.
)
Europe has zero and low emissions zones and they make sense in areas where the population density is very high. Battery electric city cars and delivery trucks are highly practical in core urban areas and represent low hanging fruit for solving environmental problems. In such cases the transponders and geo-fencing technology are to keep offending vehicles
out of an area and not to keep a vehicle
in.
Battery electric vehicles and the charging infrastructure supporting them in much of North America are very much connected to personal smart phones. Big brother can track you through your smart phone and can know where you are. If someone doesn't like this they can turn off their smart phone and charge their BEV at home. Just how far can such a person travel doing this?
Today we have no-fly lists and the threat of vaccine passports, now just recently everything has become a health crisis in our highly politicized society. In China the big business and government have created a "social credit" system. One builds up points by being a good citizen. A high point count enables a person to travel on airlines and high speed rail, or even take an intercity bus beyond a home region. Offenses which a person may be penalized include attending a non government approved church. Despite my religious beliefs and bad sense of humor often being in conflict with each other, I will still have very few brownie points under such a system because of my off-beat personality.
In conclusion, modern vehicles with their built in technology are already easy to track by big brother. Battery electric vehicles with their centralized command, cashless pay charging networks will provide a way for an authoritarian system a way to limit personal automobile travel. Wasn't there a song titled "Don't fence me in?"
