The Expert Podcast

This article in Jalopnik makes it seem like electric vehicles are not very popular, but in reality, it's actually good news for electric vehicles. It says fewer than 50 percent of drivers are considering an EV for their next car. Well, that means about half of them are. This is a vehicle that's only been around really in the mainstream for five to six to seven years. Certainly, there have been Teslas and other EVs going back farther than that, but in the mainstream, it's about a five to seven-year-old vehicle.

If in five to seven years you have half the people considering that type of a new, novel type of automobile, that's a pretty big deal. And at the same time, we're just starting to see automakers throwing billions of dollars into developing new EVs, investments in infrastructure, and the process of converting from a 100-year-old technology to a new technology. Normally, that would take more than a few years, and the fact that it's happening so fast is unprecedented.

We may be a little bit behind the times, but for example, in the United States, 63 percent of buyers say they're still going for a gas-powered vehicle. In Europe, it's 36 percent. So, it's almost half. A lot of the infrastructure and evolution of the marketplace happens faster in Europe, while in this country, it may be a long way to go, but it's happening very quickly. Electric vehicles in the new and used car market might be adopted at a faster rate within the next couple of years.