What happened to EVs?
The sudden slowdown in electric car sales is a symptom of a much uglier problem.
Paris Marx
Jan 3, 2024, 5:46 AM EST
Electric vehicles were supposed to be inevitable. Two years ago President Joe Biden climbed behind the wheel of a beefy white electric Hummer to tout his plan to make half of all new cars sold electric by 2030. The following year Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which created a bevy of incentives for drivers to buy electric and for automakers to invest in EVs. That set off a flurry of new projects: EV plants, battery-manufacturing facilities, and mining operations began popping up. By the end of 2022 the situation looked promising: More and more Americans were going electric, and soon everyone would be driving an EV, reducing emissions in the process.
The transition to an all-EV future seemed like a slam dunk. It would not only give the government a highly visible way to show it's fighting the climate crisis but boost the economy through new jobs and investment. But the electric-vehicle takeover has hit some serious roadblocks.
Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed, and analysts have suggested the country is no longer on track to hit the government's sales targets. The trickle-down effects of this decreased demand are everywhere. EVs accumulated at dealerships this fall, even as automakers cut prices to try to entice customers. Automakers have backtracked on their promised investments: Ford delayed $12 billion of its planned $50 billion investment in EV manufacturing capacity, while General Motors delayed production of key EV models and scrapped a $5 billion partnership with Honda to make cheaper EVs. Even Tesla — once the superstar of EVs — announced it would delay a planned factory in Mexico. Auto execs who were once trumpeting the potential of electric cars are even publicly acknowledging that EVs aren't working.
https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-car-ev-sales-prices-problem-transportation-2024-1
