How soon will we see mass adoption of EVs?
First off, if you wait until then, you will be too late! You won’t catch up.
To mix metaphors, this train is leaving the station now and it won’t wait for you. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting question, when will we see mass adoption which is generally considered to be around 75% – 80% of cars and vans on the roads.
There are several key factors:
- The role of fleet vehicles
- Commercial vehicles uptake
- Price parity with internal combustion engines vehicles (ICE)
- Charging infrastructure
- Economics ie when it is so much cheaper to run an ev you cannot ignore anymore
- Mainstream acceptance
- Other
Whenever a disruption affects technology the performance follows a pattern called an ‘S’ curve. This is where certain factors come to bear, and then you reach a tipping point and mass adoption quickly follows. There are many S curves matching many different people’s predictions. Below is a typical graph showing a current (November 2020) prediction. What is particularly noticeable with recent S curves over the last few years is how out of date they quickly become.
Due to a convergence of various technologies including battery developments, computing power, materials technology amongst others the disruption for EVs is likely to become faster than the adoption of mobile phones. It’s likely to be similar to the rate of change wrought by smartphones. Quite fast.
Current thinking is that this decade will see enormous changes to both transport and energy. Some people are suggesting in 10 years’ time no one will own cars. Instead, we will be using TaaS – Transport as a System. In other words autonomous ‘RoboTaxis’.
Don’t laugh, this is really coming.