Monday, February 04, 2019 4:33:30 PM
And one more chart and an idea or two. While I'm in favor of the government developing a comprehensive plan to move the US away from traditional energy, the current plan to throw money at electric cars for people who already have money, is less than excellent.
To give you some idea of the overarching problem, there is one car that gets 50 mpg and has competed well with hybrids and electrics for the last 6+ years, the Toyota Prius. And guess what? The public no longer wants the Prius either. In 2012, Toyota sold 236,000 Prius vehicles in the US. This January they sold 2987. If we extrapolate that through 2019, Toyota will sell ~36,000 Prius cars. I don't think that's the government's fault, it's just the buying public, changing their preferences.
To help scale this discussion, Ford sold 62,000 F 150s in January, about 4X total sales for all EV/PHEV vehicles. In 2018, the top 3 selling vehicles in the US were the F 150, Silverado and Ram. All full size trucks and between them they sold over 2,000,000 vehicles. That is almost exactly the world wide sales for all EV/PHEV vehicles.
I'm not saying EV sales won't happen in time, but it's not going to happen until the public gets behind the change. Below is a chart of sales total by model for December 2018 and January 2019. The 3rd column is the percent of sales in January vs. December. You can't make predictions based on these numbers but it's an interesting read.
To give you some idea of the overarching problem, there is one car that gets 50 mpg and has competed well with hybrids and electrics for the last 6+ years, the Toyota Prius. And guess what? The public no longer wants the Prius either. In 2012, Toyota sold 236,000 Prius vehicles in the US. This January they sold 2987. If we extrapolate that through 2019, Toyota will sell ~36,000 Prius cars. I don't think that's the government's fault, it's just the buying public, changing their preferences.
To help scale this discussion, Ford sold 62,000 F 150s in January, about 4X total sales for all EV/PHEV vehicles. In 2018, the top 3 selling vehicles in the US were the F 150, Silverado and Ram. All full size trucks and between them they sold over 2,000,000 vehicles. That is almost exactly the world wide sales for all EV/PHEV vehicles.
I'm not saying EV sales won't happen in time, but it's not going to happen until the public gets behind the change. Below is a chart of sales total by model for December 2018 and January 2019. The 3rd column is the percent of sales in January vs. December. You can't make predictions based on these numbers but it's an interesting read.
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