You've come a long way, baby.
Electric car sales have been steadily increasing over the years, and more recently
they have jumped:
According to research from InsideEVs.com, approximately 119,710 plug-in vehicles were sold in the United States in 2014, a 23% jump from 2013 and a 128% jump from 2012.
Leading the pack was the Nissan Leaf, which sold a total of 30,200 units in 2014, up from 23,094 last year. Other popular plug-in models included the Chevrolet Volt from General Motors, the Toyota Prius PHV and, of course, Elon Musk’s Tesla.
The knocks on electric car growth trends are that the numbers are driven by early adoption and potentially over-zealous optimism.
Think Progress points out:
In a major 2013 analysis, “Global EV Outlook: Understanding the Electric Vehicle Landscape to 2020,” the International Energy Agency estimated that electric vehicles would achieve cost parity with internal combustion engine vehicles when battery costs hit $300 per kWh of storage capacity. The analysis projected that would happen by 2020.
Yet a study last month in Nature Climate Change, “Rapidly falling costs of battery packs for electric vehicles” determined that “industry-wide cost estimates declined by approximately 14% annually between 2007 and 2014, from above US$1,000 per kWh to around US$410 per kWh.” The study, by Björn Nykvist and Måns Nilsson, also looked at battery electric vehicle (BEV) leaders, like Nissan’s LEAF and Tesla’s model S. They found, “the cost of battery packs used by market-leading BEV manufacturers are even lower, at US$300 per kWh.”
This is very good news for electric car proponents because it means the continuing growth of electric car adoption can proceed without the stigma of being
too expensive. However, as the above study's
authors point out:
And it’s quite possible that the earlier estimates, with little evidence to go on in terms of actual EV production, were overly pessimistic; thus the drop in actual costs might be not be quite as sharp as that in the estimates, though still real.
Analysts and policy-makers always seem to underestimate the pace of change in exponential growth paths.
Hopefully these positive numbers and even more positive projections will make their way into the public discourse so that everyone can make more informed decisions about our energy future.