If you compare the amount of publicity that electric vehicles receive to their percentage of sales in the United States, battery-operated cars have been getting an excess of attention for a long time now.
For example, General Motors reported that during the first quarter of 2023, it sold slightly more than 20,000 electric vehicles. Those sales are rising, and GM is still on track to convert all the vehicles it sells to electric by 2035 — just 12 years away.
But those 20,000 electric vehicles account for just 3% of GM’s total sales of 603,000 in the quarter. Other traditional auto manufacturers had similar quarterly numbers: 14,700 EVs for Hyundai/Kia, 14,200 for Volkswagen and 10,800 for Ford, whose sales were unusually low due to five-week down times at the plants that make its electric Mustang and its electric F-150 pickup.
Even the sales at Tesla, which has a significant head start on the electric vehicle market, significantly lags those of gasoline-powered cars. Tesla does not report sales by region, but by one estimate the company sold 161,000 vehicles in the United States during the first three months of 2023.
That’s eight times as many sales as second-place GM, but Tesla’s challengers are gearing up. The CNBC website reports that GM expects to build 150,000 electric vehicles for the whole of 2023, and wants to be producing 2 million of them every year starting in 2025.
Ford, also according to CNBC, expects to be assembling 2 million EVs globally by 2026. No doubt other carmakers have similar plans, but Tesla is aiming even higher: The company predicted in March that by 2030 it will be building 20 million electric vehicles per year.
Whether companies are talking about building 2 million electric cars a year or 20 million, it’s evident that the world is going to need a lot more electricity to replace the gasoline that will no longer be used in vehicles.
We’re still a long way from a non-gasoline world. Battery technology must improve in order to provide a longer charge for traveling drivers and to recharge in the amount of time that it takes to fill up your tank with gasoline. And the cost of many electric vehicles needs to come down, as government subsidies for buyers are sure to start going away.
Still, there’s no doubt about it. The world’s carmakers are switching to electricity for efficiency or environmental concerns. The next few years won’t quite be as dramatic as the transportation evolution from a horse and buggy to Henry Ford’s Model T, but the changes that are coming will indeed be significant.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
