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
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.
Latest Answers