Although they aren’t there quite yet, electric vehicles seem to be on a slow and steady march to take over the automotive market. That leads to a number of questions, none more lexicographical than the question of what to call “petrol heads” once petrol stops being used to power cars.
Although this may sound like a question designed exclusively for our readers in the U.K., it’s one worth asking in America, too. The rise of electric vehicles doesn’t just mean the end of petroleum distillate (or gas as we call it) it will also likely mean that automobiles have many fewer gears (if any), putting the term “gear head” at risk of extinction, too.
So what shall we, lovers of cars and tinkering, call ourselves once the objects we so admire change so drastically? You may wonder if EVs will mean the end of our kind altogether, since they seem so different to work on than current vehicles, but I don’t think that pessimistic view of the world will come to fruition.
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For starters, there are already people working on, tuning, building, and generally having a lot of fun with EVs. Electromods abound, YouTube is full of videos that focus on reusing old Tesla batteries, and new technology always seems scary at first, but people always figure out how to work with it.
Secondly, while EVs have fewer strictly mechanical systems within them, the rise of computers in cars has been a long time coming, and tuners already sell strictly ECU-based tunes for gas powered cars.
All of which is to say that, although working on EVs will be different than working on internal combustion engines, there’s ample evidence to suggest that the automotive world and, more specifically, enthusiast spaces, are already embracing them.
So what should they (someday maybe we) be called? Will “motor head” do the trick, or will that lead to trademark issues with the band? Does something more electrical like “zap head” or “kilowatt head” make sense? What do you think? What should fans of the automotive call themselves once there are nor gears or petrol to fill our heads with?
