Saturday, April 13, 2019

When Cars Are Mostly Electric

What will it look like when most of the cars are electric? That’s a threshold that seemed unimaginable to most of the auto industry — until it happened.

It happened last month in Norway. Car buyers bought more electric vehicles than fuel-burning vehicles. From NPR:

The 58 percent share for electric vehicles in March was a bit of a fluke, with a flurry of car sales after a period of limited supply that kept buyers waiting. Don’t expect electric cars to take a 50 percent share again in April or May — but it will happen again, and within a year or two, it will be the norm. Electric vehicles had a 30 percent share in 2018, and that number will grow in 2019.

That’s a far higher level of adoption than in the United States, where electric cars are likely to reach a 5 percent share for the first time in 2018. The U.S. market is almost 100 times the size of Norway’s, so that means more electric cars are sold to U.S. drivers. Still, the experience in Norway is important in making the idea of having mostly electric cars look attainable and familiar.