bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-31/electric-vehicles-in-california-their-day-will-come-suddenly
"It took Norway about a decade to reach six percent electric vehicle sales but then only five years to go from 6 percent to 47 percent. Norway is a special case, given that the country has generous incentives that aren’t replicated elsewhere. It does show, though, that inflection points occur, and when they do, markets can change quickly."
"Inflection points are notoriously difficult to call. Generally with consumer products, these things take longer than expected to get going, but then go faster than expected once they do. I think we’re still several years away from a true inflection point on EV adoption, but it’s definitely getting closer."
Norway can get to a high adoption rate because it's a small country and a small car market. Demand for EVs is not huge yet, but ultimately the market is limited by battery production. The US had about 200,000 EV and PHEV sales last year. This year will be higher thanks to the Model 3, but not by much. Overall the US had 17.25 million car sales. The entire EV and PHEV market was about 1%. California had 2 million car sales. 10X the entire EV and PHEV market.
China is pushing hard to get EV sales up and there are many start ups making China only EVs. Most of the li-ion batteries made for the domestic market are assembled by hand in environments that are nowhere near the quality needed to consistently make good batteries. So those Chinese EVs are not all that reliable.
To make li-ion batteries correctly requires very expensive equipment and facilities. Most of the work is done by machine because of the precision needed. People worry about the Chinese flooding the market with cheap li-ion cells, but they can't make good li-ion cells much cheaper than anyone else because the equipment needed costs the same in the US as it does in China.
It's going to take time to make enough battery factories to penetrate the larger car markets very deeply. Small countries like Norway and the Netherlands can push the curve because their yearly car sales are a rounding error compared to the rest of the world.
NJ gas tax rising again.
N.J. fuel-tax hike leaves cheap gas in the rearview mirror
This is implemented in a way to create a downward spiral for ICE cars. More tax --> Less Consumption --> More tax
Got to order my second Model 3. NJ has no sales tax on EV's so you avoid all taxes. (Gas and Sales.)
Back in the 50s a lot of countries realized that raising gas taxes didn't really affect the consumption of gasoline much and most countries leveled huge gas taxes. It's why the US still has some of the cheapest gas in the world, the taxes are lower than most countries.
Pennsylvania has had the highest gas tax in the US for some time, but EV adoption there is not significant. California recently raised theirs to be #2, but Washington State was #2 for some time. Here on the border with Oregon, people will make sure to fill up in Oregon if they can (plus in Oregon they pump the gas for you), but the local gas stations aren't out of business either.
California and Washington have seen some of the highest EV adoption rates in the country, but California has a statewide awareness about air quality that other states don't have and the state had offered generous EV incentives for a while.
Washington doesn't have any EV incentives anymore, but they did for a while. What Washington has is the cheapest electricity rates in the US as well as a strong eco awareness in the western part of the state (where the bulk of the population lives). My electricity rate is $0.08/KHW. Seattle is a bit higher, but not by much. I estimate my car costs about $0.025 a mile to drive, 1/4 the cost of my SO's Subaru Impreza.
Astronomically high gas taxes high affect consumption, but adding $0.04 a gallon is probably not going to be noticed by consumers. Gasoline can shift more than that day to day due to market forces.
