Press. voanews.com
The bumper
sticker on the back of Scott Wilson's car reads, "This is what the end of
gasoline looks like." And what does that car look like? A sleek, sci-fi
experimental vehicle? A $100,000 Tesla luxury car?
Nope. It's just
a Kia Soul EV, the battery-powered version of the Korean automaker's boxy
hatchback. Once the domain of concept cars and hobbyists, electric vehicles are
no longer so exotic. And sales are picking up. A record 150,000 of them sold
last year in the United States. "It used to be I knew everyone I saw that
was driving an electric car," said Wilson, the vice president of the
Electric Vehicle Association of Greater Washington, D.C. "Now, I
don't." There are about to be a lot more strangers in EVs on the roads,
many experts say.
Big carmakers,
big plans
Volvo says every
car it makes in 2019 and beyond will have an electric motor. General Motors
says the company "believes in an all-electric future." Bloomberg New
Energy Finance (BNEF) predicts that in just over two decades, EVs will make up
more than half of all vehicles sold. Other analysts have more modest
expectations. But even Exxon Mobil sees EVs topping 10 percent of the market by
2040.
Automakers hit a
significant milestone in the past year. In December, General Motors launched
the Chevrolet Bolt EV, the first car with a price tag under $40,000 and a range
of more than 320 kilometers. Automakers hit a significant milestone in the past
year. In December, General Motors launched the Chevrolet Bolt EV, the first car
with a price tag under $40,000 and a range of more than 320 kilometers.
That range is
"basically double anything else that's available at a comparable
price," said Chevrolet spokesman Fred Ligouri. Those figures "do
wonders for getting beyond" what's known as range anxiety, potential
buyers' fear of draining the battery before reaching their destination. One-third
of buyers have never owned an electric vehicle before.
"They went
from (an) internal combustion engine vehicle right into pure electric," an
encouraging sign, Ligouri said. The Bolt's performance has impressed critics as
well. Motor Trend magazine named the Bolt the 2017 Car of the Year. The Bolt
beat industry upstart Tesla to the mid-priced market. A modest 15,000 or so
have been sold so far. But nearly a half-million people have ordered the Tesla
Model 3, the company's entrant into the mass market, despite long waits and
slow production.
"Those are
signals that there's unmet demand for some of these new technologies,"
said the World Resources Institute's Eliot Metzger. Electrification is cheaper
than ever as the price of lithium ion batteries plummets faster than analysts
expected. As costs come down, experts are moving up the date when electric
vehicles can compete with internal combustion engines on price. BNEF puts that
date in the second half of the next decade.
"We're much
further along than most researchers (and) industry insiders would have
projected just two or three years ago," said Nic Lutsey at the
International Council on Clean Transportation.
China syndrome
Another reason
the industry is moving fast: China. Officials in the world's biggest auto market
will require carmakers to meet an electric vehicle quota starting in 2019. Beijing
aims to increase EVs' share of the market from 1 to 2 percent today to around 4
percent in 2020.
"That's a
very large scale up within just several years," Lutsey noted, but
automakers say they can do it. The push for electric vehicles is part of the
government's plan to clean up the toxic air in China's major cities. Chinese
officials are considering a ban on gas- and diesel-powered cars.
But it's not
just China. Pollution concerns in France, the United Kingdom, and India have
officials there considering bans, too. In the United States, the Trump
administration aims to relax vehicle emissions standards, though state policies
will likely complicate those efforts.
Without a push
from government, experts say electric vehicles will have a hard time making
major gains as long as gas prices are relatively low. But as electric vehicle
driver Wilson points out, that can change at any time. "After the next
crisis, when gas is $5 a gallon, then there will be waiting lists for cars like
this," he said.