Electric vehicles are picking up speed and Big Oil must be terrified
March 31, 2016 will go down in history as the day America sent a powerful message to Big Oil: we’re over you. Tesla unveiled the Model 3, the affordable electric vehicle with a 215-mile range. People lined up around blocks across the world to put in their pre-orders — and the waiting list grew and grew. By the next morning, the list had close to 200,000 names on it, and it’s now heading towards 300,000! This is huge! That’s more than 50 percent of all EVs sold in the United States to date. And Tesla isn’t alone in its affordable EV ambition — both Nissan and Chevrolet plan to start selling long-range electric cars in the $30,000 range.
While all of this was happening, California approached a significant milestone of its own: The 200,000th EV sold in the state. That’s awesome news for the state with some of the nation’s worst air quality.
But what do these numbers really mean for clean air? Fortunately, the indefatigable researchers at the Union of Concerned Scientists were standing by to explain.
According to clean vehicles expert David Reichmuth, these 200K EVs:
Saved 56 million gallons of gasoline per year, equivalent to 7,000 tanker trucks worth of gasoline going unused.
Saved their drivers $81 million per year. That’s a lot of money staying in drivers’ pockets.
Prevented 425,000 metric tons of CO2 — that’s equal to the carbon emissions of burning 2,300 railcars worth of coal.
And this is just the beginning. The rate of EV sales in California is certain to grow with new charging infrastructure, ensuring we can wrest our dollars and health out of the clutches of the oil industry. As the record pre-orders of the Model 3 shows us, there is an incredible appetite for leaving dirty energy in the (CO2-free) dust.
A future free from tailpipe emissions is feeling less and less like a pie-in-the-sky notion. Analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance says the EV transition may happen faster than you think.
The spread of new technologies follows an “S-curve.” Growth starts off slowly and, as the cost per unit drop and the product connects with everyday people, sales rocket, and boom: the technology becomes ubiquitous. We’ve seen it happen with refrigerators, color TVs, cell phones, computers and, yes, the internal combustion engine. And there’s evidence that EVs are headed in the same direction.
To us, hundreds of thousands of people reserving a new Tesla sounds like a great first step to successfully connecting with everyday people. And as if on cue, just last week the California Air Resources Board instituted some changes to the Clean Vehicles Rebate Project to ensure EVs are accessible for low-income communities, boosting rebates by $1,500 for households with relatively low incomes, while restricting rebates for wealthier households. Add to that the growing number of new-model EVs, like GM’s Bolt and the new plug-in Prius Prime, and we might have a full-blown automobile revolution on our hands.
