2022 — Year of the US EV

Think of it as a staged rollout. In Europe, electric vehicles went mainstream in 2020. In China, the great leap to EVs came in 2021. For the US, 2022 may well be the year the EV goes bigtime, with more models, more charging stations and, most of all, more sales. Climate carers need some good news, and this could be it.

What’s been driving the boom so far are tightening mileage standards on car companies, with a bit of help from rebates. Originally, car makers expected to raise their fleet average mileage mainly by making regular cars more efficient. Consumers foiled that by flocking to SUVs and other big cars. Volkswagen tried diesel as a solution, since it gets better mileage. But several billion dollars of fines later, VW and other carmakers have settled on EVs as the fix for tightening emission standards.

Consumer preference is set to take the driver’s seat in EV sales before long, though. And the momentum could soon be overwhelming, with sexy new EV models everywhere, and owners of increasingly stodgy-feeling gasoline cars the ones left wondering where to find convenient filling station and get spare parts. But first, let’s…

.. Look Back a Bit

EVs really took off in Europe with a 140% jump in sales in Pandemic Year One, even as total car sales plunged by 20%, leaving EVs with 10% of Europe’s passenger vehicle market overall. The rush continued last year, with EVs holding over 25% of a still-shrinking base of total car sales by year-end. For 2021 as a whole, the EV share is a bit lower, at 20%. More than half were all-electric. These numbers cover plug-in hybrids as well as fully electric cars, with the UK included.

Even so, Europe wasn’t the EV headline grabber in 2021. In China, EV sales shot up by 150% last year, to top 3.5 million, accounting for 13.5% of all vehicle sales for the year and around 18% in the month of November. China’s official goal is for EVs to capture 20% of all vehicle sales by 2025. It may well hit that goal in 2022.

All this even as Beijing continues to lower direct consumer rebates on EVs. China Association of Automobile Manufacturers’ Secretary-General Fu Bingfeng explained in a talk quoted by Energy Intelligence: China “is entering a new phase of growth that is more market-driven rather than being dependent entirely on [government] policy support.”

For most Americans, EVs remain a futuristic fixation of environmentally conscious high flyers. But that’s changing quickly. While 2022 opened with a relatively small slate of US EV models available from market leader Tesla, VW, Nissan, Ford and others, by yearend multiple new models are due out from GM, Toyota, Hyundai and Kia, among others. Lightening, the electric version of Ford’s top-selling F-150 pickup, is expected to be the year’s not-so-futuristic fixation.

GM and Rivian will have out EV pickups soon, as well. Then there’s the Tesla Cybertruck, which is missing its original 2021 launch date by a year or more — albeit partly because Tesla can’t churn out enough of its other models to satisfy demand, even with the imminent opening of its new Austin, Texas factory.

Speaking of Texas, while California with its long-standing “zero-emission vehicle” push still accounted for 42% of all US EV sales as of mid-2021, Florida was second with 5.7% and Texas third at 5.1%. New York is a somewhat distant fourth at 3.2%. That’s a much more regionally balanced market than most people credit — an important sign that EVs are moving inland and mainstream.

Meanwhile, the federal government has $7.5 billion in funding for charging station expansion burning a hole in its pocket — funding provided under the 2021 “bi-partisan” infrastructure act. And did I mention that TV and other advertising for EVs is soaring, while ad spending for regular cars declines?

Looking Ahead…

Already much of the top auto design talent has gone electric, and automakers are spending billions on new EV and battery factories. How many innovative new gasoline cars will be coming out even in 2025, much less 2030? When will people start celebrating the resale value of EVs and worrying about their gasoline cars becoming worthless? A Washington Post contributor recently advised luxury car buyers to keep in mind that within a few years, “demand for gasoline-powered cars will be shrinking, so buying a new one now means it will be worth a lot less by the time you’re ready to trade up.”

There’s a precedent for a complete flip in US consumer transportation tastes within a decade: the transition from horse-drawn buggies to cars. In 1907, only 140,300 cars were registered in the entire US, according to Scientific American. By 1917, the number of cars was almost 5 million. If EVs spread at that rate from their 2020 base, they’ll make up 75% or more of passenger vehicle sales by 2030. Who will want to be the last person on their block to buy a new gasoline car?

Converting to EVs won’t spell the end of oil use, but it will be a huge help. Passenger vehicles account for more than one-quarter of all oil demand. Larger road vehicles account for another 15%-20%, and many of those are set to go electric over the next decade, too. The 18-wheelers may take longer to shift to electricity or hydrogen — although if we ordinary folk start buying less, with more of that made close to home, we won’t need so many big trucks anyhow. But that’s a story for another day.