[ Nearly 10 percent of cars sold in 2023 were EVs.]
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THE ELECTRIC-VEHICLE TRANSITION IS QUIETLY SURGING AHEAD  
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Ryan Cooper
January 2, 2024
The American Prospect
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_ Nearly 10 percent of cars sold in 2023 were EVs. _

Vehicles move along the 2023 Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV assembly line
at the General Motors Orion Assembly, June 15, 2023, in Lake Orion,
Michigan., CARLOS OSORIO/AP PHOTO

 

One of the biggest climate challenges for any country will be
decarbonizing transportation. According to the EPA, about 29 percent
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greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation after accounting for
electricity use, just behind industrial production at 30 percent.

Fortunately, the electric-vehicle transition is happening faster than
many expected, despite concerns earlier in the year that automakers
were pushing back their EV rollouts
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Clearly, that is not a response to consumer demand. A new report
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the state of the American car market, again from the EPA, has the
goods. The EV share of new car purchases increased from 1.8 percent in
2020, to 3.2 percent in 2021, to 5.2 percent in 2022, to an
estimated _9.8 percent_ in 2023. Plug-in hybrid vehicles, meanwhile,
increased from 0.5 percent to 2 percent.

In other words, the EV share of new cars increased more than fivefold
in three years, while the share of plug-in hybrids quadrupled. At that
pace of acceleration, EVs will make up half of new car sales by 2026
or so. These two developments reduced the emissions of the vehicle
fleet by roughly 6 percent in 2022, and perhaps _11 percent_ in
2023.

It will no doubt be many decades before the last gas-powered car
leaves the road. But the average car does not
last _that_ long—just over 12 years, as of 2022. So if these
trends hold up, the U.S. vehicle fleet will be dramatically more
electrified in a short space of time.

There is every reason to think that these trends _will_ continue, at
least on the current policy track. The Inflation Reduction Act
provides ten years of secure subsidies for EVs, and every auto
manufacturer around the world has made huge investments—even if some
have been delayed somewhat—around the assumption that EVs are where
the industry is going over the medium term.

That said, Donald Trump has promised to tear up the IRA
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he is elected in 2024, adding a giant climate risk on top of his plot
to end democracy. But so long as that doesn’t happen, for the next
decade at least, every year a larger and larger share of new cars will
be electric, and they will displace a larger and larger share of the
existing gas-powered fleet. That in turn will take a larger and larger
bite out of transportation emissions and U.S. oil consumption—and
that’s a big deal globally, as America is still the largest consumer
of oil in the world, gobbling up nearly 20 percent
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the total supply as of 2022.

The benefits don’t stop there. In addition to climate, there will be
increasing health benefits from cutting down on toxic smog
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noise produced by internal combustion engines. Consuming less and less
oil will undermine the wealth and power of reactionary
petro-dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Russia abroad, and fossil
fuel barons like David Koch at home. And as solar and wind continue
to replace electricity
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by coal and gas, the secondary emissions produced by vehicle charging
will fall as well. All that is to the good.

Now, it should be admitted that transitioning from gas-powered to
electric vehicles by itself is far from ideal, from either a climate
or a human welfare perspective. EVs require a tremendous amount of
resources, particularly the enormous and heavy American-style models.
Many of those resources are still produced with carbon-intensive
processes, like steel (though there is developing progress on that
front). And the increased weight of U.S. EVs, thanks in part to the
battery packs and in part to the annoyingly dominant crossover SUV
models, harms road surfaces and will increase municipal repair costs.

More generally, it’s been obvious for decades that the total
reorientation of the American built environment around cars and
driving has been a disaster, contributing to a crisis of inactivity,
loneliness, and nearly 120 people per day
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from collisions. If we could, it would be best to dedicate marginal
manufacturing capacity to improved public transit, electric bikes,
scooters, and so on, because they could replace most car trips at a
fraction of the cost in energy and resources. Indeed, e-bikes have
displaced global oil demand by something like four times as much
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all EVs, mostly thanks to their heavy adoption in China and elsewhere.

But reorienting sprawling American cities to be safe for bikes and
pedestrians—already well in progress in some cities—will take
years of bitter fighting with NIMBYs and ingrained, knee-jerk car
supremacy. Even New York City, where a majority of households don’t
own cars, struggles with elementary stuff like dedicated lanes for
bikes
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buses. And in any case, even the least car-dependent cities on Earth
(like, say, Amsterdam) still have many vehicles for taxis, deliveries,
and those stubborn people who just like to drive.

It’s unfortunate that America didn’t get started on its
decarbonization and energy efficiency program 30 years ago. And of
course, every city and town should do its utmost to make the roads
safe for cyclists and pedestrians, so people can take as many trips as
possible without having to fire up a three-ton piece of machinery. But
the hour is so late climate-wise that we need to smash down emissions
as fast as possible any way we can. The fact that the share of EVs
sold is nearly doubling every year is very good news.

_RYAN COOPER is the Prospect’s managing editor, and author of How
Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question
in Politics
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was previously a national correspondent for The Week. His work has
also appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, and Current
Affairs._

Read the original article at Prospect.org.
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Used with the permission. © The American Prospect, Prospect.org,
2023. All rights reserved. 

Click here to support the Prospect's brand of independent impact
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