It’s been ten years since what you could argue was the first real mass-produced all-electric vehicle. The Tesla Model S was released to the world, and boy has a lot happened over that time.
Getting accurate numbers can be tricky, but it’s estimated that from 2012 to the end of 2021, approximately 17,600,000 electric and hybrid electric cars were sold globally. Back in 2012, 120,000 electric vehicles (EVs) were sold globally, and in 2021, EV sales doubled from the previous year to a record 6.6 million. To put this into perspective, in 2021 10% of global car sales were EVs, four times the market share in 2019. So, the growth of EVs has been amazing in a relatively short period of time.
In fact, more electric cars were sold in China in 2021 than were sold in the entire world the year before. But while EVs made up 8.6% of new car sales in 2021, they represent just 1% of the world’s total car fleet.
Here in Australia in 2021, 8,688 EVs were sold, representing 1.57% of the total light vehicle market, and the Federal Labor Government want this number to increase quickly by seeing 89%of new car sales in 2030 be EVs, with about 16 per cent of those plug-in hybrids.
I think though as an overall indication of the global rise of EVs, the International Energy Agency predicts that 145 million electric vehicles (as in cars, vans, buses, trucks etc) will be on the world’s roads by 2030.
Taking all these numbers into account, I was surprised to read the following article on wired.com that compared the EV markets of Europe, China, and the US and how growth in the US are lagging well behind the other markets.
To quote wired.com:
“In December 2021, sales of electric vehicles overtook sales of diesel cars for the first time in Europe, as 176,000 EVs rolled out of car dealerships across the continent. At the same time in China, the country’s automotive industry announced that EV sales for the year had ballooned by 158 percent compared with 2020, as more than 3.5 million vehicles took to the roads.”
“These sales figures were not a blip. In Europe, EVs made up an estimated 14 percent of all new vehicles sold in 2021, according to the banking and financial services company ING. In China, it was 9 percent. In the United States? Not so much. EVs made up just 4 percent of vehicles sale last year.”
It’s an interesting read:
The US Refuses to Fall in Love with Electric Cars – wired.com
But as EVs may be struggling for acceptance in the US, it appears the Cavalry may come to the rescue in the form of a NASCAR EV Series starting as early as mid-2023.
Yes, next year and to top that off, it may include EV SUVs too …what the!!!!
Check this out
‘NASCAR might run an EV Racecar in 2023’ – motortrend.com
I’m not sure how the die-hard, noisy, fume-breathing V8 NASCAR fans in the deep south of the US will cope with the last sentence of the motor trend article.
“You just have to wonder how long it would be before we see a Tesla competing alongside the likes of Ford, Chevrolet, and Toyota at the Daytona International Speedway at over 200 mph.”
I can hear the moonshine stills going into overdrive just at the thought of it all.