What caused the meteoric rise of electric vehicles a few years ago?

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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?

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18 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

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.

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