I Think, Therefore I Drive

More than 40 years ago, when I was in the first semester of my engineering degree, Paty gave me a ride to Tec. She was studying Electronic Systems Engineering, just like me, but she was several semesters ahead. She was brilliant, self-assured, and, to me, much more than an older student: she was a role model. She was also only the second woman I had ever met who truly loved driving. The first was my mom. Paty drove a manual-drive Mustang with a kind of skill that I found hypnotic. I watched her shift gears with a mix of precision, force, and pleasure, as if she and the car were having a private conversation.

At some point during that ride, I asked her whether she would rather have an automatic car, because I had struggled so much with gear changing that I refused to drive at all, and thus an automatic seemed like the perfect choice. Her answer was a masterclass in mechanical sensitivity. She told me that only in a manual car could she really feel the power of the machine; that the car asked her for the changes; that there was a unique sensory experience in hearing the engine, feeling the vibration, and anticipating the exact moment to shift up or down. I listened to her, fascinated. And I understood perfectly what she meant, even if I did not fully share her conclusion.

I have carried that conversation with me for decades. And I believe that if Paty were giving me that ride today, I would have a different answer. I would tell her that yes, I understand that intimate relationship with the machine, that thrill of feeling the car. But I would also tell her that, over time, I found another way of relating to driving. And for me, that way arrived with my electric vehicle.

If she loved her car because she could feel it, I love mine because I think it.

I think about the route. I think about efficiency. I think about timing, charging, distance, acceleration, and energy use. I think about the system behind the machine. In that sense, my relationship with driving is less visceral, perhaps, but no less meaningful. Quite the opposite. It feels fuller, more conscious, more intentional.

I think, therefore I drive.

Defending electric vehicles is not about romanticizing them. Much less is it to claim that they will solve, on their own, the problem of mobility. They will not. An electric car stuck in traffic is still a car stuck in traffic. An urbanism model that forces people to make absurd daily journeys remains a bad one, even if every car on the road is electric. Electrification does not replace the need for better public transport, more walkable cities, cycling infrastructure, sensible territorial planning, and a culture of saving and using energy and transport itself more efficiently.

And yet, even with all those caveats, I am in favor of electric vehicles. One reason is simple: they force us to see costs that internal-combustion mobility models have hidden with astonishing efficiency for decades.

Combustion cars have taught us to artificially separate the parts of a single story. We see the car, we buy it, we use it, and we pay for gasoline. And that makes it seem as though the bill ends there. But it does not. It never did. Extracting oil, transporting it, refining it, distributing it, burning it, and absorbing all the associated environmental and health impacts have always been enormously expensive in sustainability terms. We have simply learned to keep those costs offstage. They do not appear in full when we fill up the tank. They do not appear in the convenience of turning the key and driving away. They do not appear, at least not immediately, in the driver’s experience.

Those costs show up elsewhere: in air pollution; in respiratory illness; in degraded ecosystems; in damaged water systems; in land sacrificed to sustain an extractive logic that is presented to us as normal. They show up in wildlife, in soils, in human health, and in the health of every other species with whom we share this planet. The problem is that because these costs are fragmented, deferred and socialized, it becomes very easy to pretend they do not exist.

Electric vehicles do not make life-cycle costs disappear. It would be naïve to say otherwise. They also require minerals, manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, logistics chains, and new technical capacities. They also raise uncomfortable questions about extraction, recycling, power grids, and territorial justice. But that is precisely why they strike me as a much more honest conversation. With electromobility, those costs become harder to hide. They become more visible, more debatable, more traceable, more accountable.

And that matters.

It matters because it forces us to stop thinking only about the tailpipe and to begin thinking about the full system. It matters because it shifts the conversation away from “which car do I like more?” towards “what kind of mobility are we financing, promoting and normalizing?” It matters because it reminds us that changing fuel is not enough: we must also question the model of production and consumption that underpins how we move.

That is why, for me, the answer is not just more electrification. The answer is also to move less. And that might sound provocative in a culture that equates mobility with progress, speed with success, and permanent availability with freedom. But moving less does not mean living less. It means planning better. It means avoiding unnecessary trips. It means bringing housing, work, services and care closer together. It means using the car, electric or otherwise, with more intelligence and less inertia. It means applying saving and efficient use not only to energy, but also to mobility itself.

Within that framework, being an EV user has been deeply interesting for me. Yes, insurance is more expensive. Yes, the infrastructure is still incipient. Yes, we need more workshops, more spare parts, more specialized technical personnel, more mechanic-electricians, better charging networks, and greater market trust. That is, in part, the cost of being an early adopter. Some of us decide to pay it, and some do not, and both positions are understandable. But those of us who do take that step are also helping push forward a change that may later become more accessible to others.

Driving an EV also requires a special relationship with the journey. I do not mean better; I mean different. It requires route planning, attention to efficiency, a more conscious use of the accelerator, and a fuller understanding of the trip itself. For me, for example, it is genuinely fun to plan a trip to Mexico City, or even to manage my daily commute to work. Far from feeling like a burden, it keeps me engaged, it empowers me, and it makes me an active participant in the experience of moving.

Just as some people love a manual car because they feel it, I adore my EV because I think it. And in an era when so much of our consumption operates on autopilot, thinking the car does not feel like a disadvantage to me. It feels like a virtue.

That is why I believe any serious defense of electromobility should not rest on the fantasy that the electric car is pure, innocent or sufficient. Its value lies not in absolving us, but in unsettling us. In exposing the hidden bill. In reminding us that all mobility has costs, and that the ethical and political difference lies in whether we choose to see them.

I would rather see them.

And from there, I would rather support a model of mobility that electrifies where it makes sense, reduces where possible, shares where wise, and always plans better. Not because the electric vehicle is the end of the road, but because it may be a more honest way to begin.

Perhaps that is, in the end, the real shift: not simply driving differently, but thinking differently about what it means to drive at all.