I understand it was always an appealing choice to a small subset of customers (have charging stations at home / work, only travel relatively short distances, etc) but all the disadvantages of EV that people are pointing out now were even worse a few years ago – like high purchase prices, range concerns, batteries underperforming in cold weather, lack of infrastructure, repairability etc.
What was the actual driver behind the massive EV boom?
In: Engineering
Politics. The downside of the EV was still there, but people purchased them to make a point. In those days there were also rumors spread that in the following 20 years the majority of vehicles on the road will be electric. These people wanted to be part of the trend.
There’s a number of factors
While there were electric cars before Tesla they were either impractical, too expense, and flawed in some way.
While hybrids like the Prius were very good but had a reputation for being ugly and not appealing.
Tesla made a practical road car that appealed to the average consumer and was able to get the costs down to where it was affordable. They also deployed increasing numbers of rapid charging stations to support them.
Tesla understood that making the car wasn’t enough, you need the infrastructure to go with it.
Tesla (Musk) announced they wouldn’t be enforcing any of their patents to encourage other car manufacturers to develop electric cars using technologies developed by Tesla without a fee. By this point Tesla was the clear leader in the electric car market, and (say what you will about Musk) this was a rare moment of corporate altruism.
Government subsides and the rising cost of gas made electric cars and hybrids more appealing.
Environmentalism is also a factor, people have been wanting affordable and practical eco-friendly cars for years so the demand was there.
Once practical electric cars became a reality various government began to actively support and incentivize people to buy them
That and to be perfectly honest, they are trendy
EDIT: and duh, the batteries! Wide spread availability of Lithium ion batteries like those used in cellphones greatly increased their range.
Basically, there was always a small market where EVs have no downside. The “meteoric rise” happened because vehicles that appealed to those people were made at the same time Tesla started building a charging network. Sales are fast when 100% of your customers don’t already have the product.
But if there were 5,000,000 people who could really use an EV, we’re probably nearing the point where 4,500,000 of them already have one. (I just made up the numbers, I’m sure someone’s eager to name the real figures.) That the remaining small portion hasn’t bought one yet means they’re probably waiting for cheaper ones, or ones with longer range, or some other thing that hasn’t been solved yet. Then there’s the rest of the car-buying market, who need to be *convinced* they want an EV. That’s tough. It costs money to attract those people. That’s a big factor in why sales are slowing: almost everyone who wants EVs already has one.
It doesn’t help that Musk has tarnished his brand in some peoples’ eyes. And it probably doesn’t help that there are a lot more makers of EVs today: a wider selection means the already smaller customer base is split between more makers. There is such a thing as “too many” EVs and we won’t know what that number is until some company folds from poor sales. It doesn’t help that Tesla’s still considered a “luxury” brand but many deliveries are stuffed with quality issues. It doesn’t help that the unbridled optimism of people from the early 2010s shifted to cynicism and pessimism over the late 2010s.
It also doesn’t help that despite carefully-chosen economic indicators showing that everything’s doing great, most consumers feel like they’re underwater and losing ground. That’s not an environment in which people take risks on fancy cars.
It also doesn’t help that Tesla created some of the problems you mentioned, like repairability. Part of how they cut costs is making decisions that hinder repairability. They brag about many assemblies being one part instead of many, but that can often mean after an accident or in the case of some mechanical failure the owner is left facing a very large bill because there’s no way to replace just the part that broke. The way so many of their pieces integrate with a proprietary computer means there’s just no way for people to tinker and do their own repairs.
Basically: everything smelled better in the early 2010s and people were excited about a lot of things. Now everything stinks and people are being more Utilitarian.
Cell phones.
Seriously! Stick with me…
Lithium ion batteries revolutionized and made EVs possible, by giving them 5x the energy and power that lead acid batteries have. And those batteries were only developed and had their manufacturing scaled up due to the rise of cell phones.
A lead acid EV is able to drive 40 miles – lithium ion can drive hundreds. A lead acid EV accelerates like a golf cart, a lithium ion EV accelerates like a rocket ship. This is truly the technology (and price) breakthrough that allowed EVs to become viable, and lead to them becoming mainstream.
Lack of infrastructure and cold weather are still the two biggest challenges, but just about everything else listed is much less of an issue now than it was.
Range and batteries? They’re better than they ever have been. Lower end EVs easily maintain 200-300mi, the same as a smaller engine gas car, and luxury EVs are breaking the 500mi barrier. Chinese company NIO is deploying batteries with 700+mi range.
Cost? They’ve come way down. They’re priced pretty similarly to gas and PHEV cars in the same class with the same features, and in the US you get the benefit of the tax credit. In a lot of places in Europe and Asia they’re under the $30k price point. ESPECIALLY in China. Used EVs are a lot more accessible too. We just bought my mom a used Ioniq 5 with about 15-20k miles for the same price I bought my Passat with 50k a few years ago.
Infrastructure is also really only a MAJOR issue in North America, and the rollout of NACS changes that, because in addition to a unifying standard, non Tesla EVs can now use the Supercharger network. There’s also been new heavy investments from brands like Mercedes to start building new charging networks using the new standard.
Cold Weather is also still an issue, but it’s also an issue that’s regularly being studied with remedies being developed. Also, most new EVs will precondition the battery now for cold weather.
Tesla. They proved EVs could be competitive despite all other major manufacturers claiming otherwise. Their rapid progress with the supercharger network in the US really sped things up as it quickly eliminated range anxiety that many had with regards to EVs. The gigafactory helped them with the demand required to increase production. Elon was also a good salesman in the beginning, prior to his rapid decline, and he amassed a good following. It also helped that he was very transparent and open about their failures which most other companies would keep hidden.
It started picking up rapidly in Europe because range anxiety isn’t really an issue due to how small the countries are and EVs were satisfactory for 90+% of what owners needed it for.
Government incentives also helped massively. But it all started with the success of Tesla.
Battery technology.
There’s other reasons too, but at the end of the day, it’s because modern batteries let you drive 200+ miles without charging.
Elon Musk.
You can hate him for a lot of things, but he absolutely deserves credit for this.
* Creating the Tesla Roadster
* creating Tesla Model S
* Creating Supercharger charging infrastructure
* Creating Model 3
* Creating Model Y
* Creating gigafactory
Everything else is a consequence of the above:
Various followers and copycats:
* Rivian
* XPeng
* Lucid
* ChargePoint
* BYD
Government regulations forcing EV vehicles by a certain year
Government subsidy and mandates.
Remove those and the sales numbers would be a fraction of what we see now.
Electric cars will have their day, but I feel the day is quite a bit farther out than proponents would like.
The green global agenda, and governments subsidizing the crap out of car manufacturing and purchasing plans for regular people.
The manufacturers will always go where there is most money to be made (or saved. free government money ftw), and regular people feel better when they think they’ve somehow tricked the system and “saved money” in the process.
If you are a manufacturer and want to sell more electric cars you have to convince people they need them. What better way to do it than wrap all of that in some kind of righteous cause.
There are monumental infrastructural issues that need to be overcome before widespread electric car adoption becomes possible, and we’re not there yet. Case in point: it’s a hurricane/winter snow storm, and nobody has power. Your car is an expensive boat anchor now, and you’re stuck.
Latest Answers