I think it’s always appropriate to add the caveat to Norway that they have heavily subsidized and forced electric car sales even though they have one of the largest per capita sovereign funds that is almost completely financed by the sale of “dirty” oil. If every country had Norway’s resources, per capita, the government can fund a shift quickly to electric cars. When you only have 5 million people and a crap load of dirty dollars, you can do a lot of things other places don’t. Statistics are fun to “lie” with!!
I have an 8 yr old Infiniti that gets 20 mpg and only drive 5-6 K miles a year---gonna drive it the rest of my life--20-25 years unless the gov buys me an electric car.
At what rate do you think India will move in EV adoption? though the technology is getting cheaper, the infrastructure necessary to manage EV for 100s of millions of potential customer seems farther away.
Another excellent article. As an electric car owner it is encouraging to see that the EV market is expanding and we will have more EVs on the road year on year, hopefully driving costs down and encouraging more uptake. It feels as though 2021/22 is the beginning of an inflection point for the technology.
Your previous post outlining the point at which EV cars' carbon footprint is negated (3-4 years) has stayed with me. As most EVs are new cars, most of these owners will be encouraged to trade in and buy up after 3 years (as is the market trend) but i am conflicted as to whether it will be better or worse for the environment to do this. On the one hand the car will only just become carbon neutral in its cost, so it feels as though we should drive that car for longer to really cash in on its ecological value. However on the other hand investing in a new EV will pass that second hand car into the market and also introduce a new EV which will inevitably help drive the overall transition forward... Which would mean that buying and keeping the car for as long as possible would be less valuable for the environment than you would think...
You should examine the absolute numbers along with percentages. The US is far more reliant on automobiles than most of Europe so the percentage differences would be misleading.
This is a great post, thank you Hannah. I think you're right that the IEA's estimate for EV growth by 2030 is too small and I'm looking forward to that post
This post was great... was looking at the Q1 2023 numbers in California yesterday and if I'm reading it correctly, 21% of all light duty vehicles sold in the state in Q1 were ZEVs. In the Bay Area counties, that figure is closer to 30%. The data is at the link below and published just last week - let me know if you read it differently! https://www.energy.ca.gov/files/zev-and-infrastructure-stats-data
Thanks for the interesting article! Last year I looked for the data on how many electric cars were sold the year before from each manufacturer and I could only find about 2-3 million. Do you have a breakdown of the sales of electric passenger cars by manufacturer?
I think it’s always appropriate to add the caveat to Norway that they have heavily subsidized and forced electric car sales even though they have one of the largest per capita sovereign funds that is almost completely financed by the sale of “dirty” oil. If every country had Norway’s resources, per capita, the government can fund a shift quickly to electric cars. When you only have 5 million people and a crap load of dirty dollars, you can do a lot of things other places don’t. Statistics are fun to “lie” with!!
I have an 8 yr old Infiniti that gets 20 mpg and only drive 5-6 K miles a year---gonna drive it the rest of my life--20-25 years unless the gov buys me an electric car.
A lot of these batteries require minerals such as cobalt which is often mined with slavery. How do you balance this human cost ethically?
At what rate do you think India will move in EV adoption? though the technology is getting cheaper, the infrastructure necessary to manage EV for 100s of millions of potential customer seems farther away.
I wonder if Japan will catch up?
Another excellent article. As an electric car owner it is encouraging to see that the EV market is expanding and we will have more EVs on the road year on year, hopefully driving costs down and encouraging more uptake. It feels as though 2021/22 is the beginning of an inflection point for the technology.
Your previous post outlining the point at which EV cars' carbon footprint is negated (3-4 years) has stayed with me. As most EVs are new cars, most of these owners will be encouraged to trade in and buy up after 3 years (as is the market trend) but i am conflicted as to whether it will be better or worse for the environment to do this. On the one hand the car will only just become carbon neutral in its cost, so it feels as though we should drive that car for longer to really cash in on its ecological value. However on the other hand investing in a new EV will pass that second hand car into the market and also introduce a new EV which will inevitably help drive the overall transition forward... Which would mean that buying and keeping the car for as long as possible would be less valuable for the environment than you would think...
You should examine the absolute numbers along with percentages. The US is far more reliant on automobiles than most of Europe so the percentage differences would be misleading.
This is a great post, thank you Hannah. I think you're right that the IEA's estimate for EV growth by 2030 is too small and I'm looking forward to that post
How many EV miles in China (and Germany) are being powered by burning coal?
(Yes, I'm still bitter about Germany taking their nuclear plants offline)
PS: thanks for this post. We were supposed to have a rental Tesla but they were out and gave us a gas car.
This post was great... was looking at the Q1 2023 numbers in California yesterday and if I'm reading it correctly, 21% of all light duty vehicles sold in the state in Q1 were ZEVs. In the Bay Area counties, that figure is closer to 30%. The data is at the link below and published just last week - let me know if you read it differently! https://www.energy.ca.gov/files/zev-and-infrastructure-stats-data
Thanks for the interesting article! Last year I looked for the data on how many electric cars were sold the year before from each manufacturer and I could only find about 2-3 million. Do you have a breakdown of the sales of electric passenger cars by manufacturer?