EV Skeptics Clinging to Anything to Try to Deny Obvious Tech Transition

It’s funny — this article idea came to mind just before I saw Steve Hanley’s latest piece. That article was focused on a survey of US auto dealerships showing that they are not particularly eager or excited to sell EVs. I wasn’t specifically thinking about auto dealerships, but something has been irking me for several months and a recent conversation helped me to pinpoint the issue a little better and create a story about it, and auto dealerships are definitely part of that story.

Let’s start with the core story: the auto world is transitioning to electric vehicles. That’s happening, and it will keep happening, and there’s no reason why EVs wouldn’t replace gas cars just as cars replaced horses about 100 years ago. Here on CleanTechnica, we (writers and readers) have been saying that for more than 10 years. Some of you have been saying that for decades. (Huge tip of the hat to those of you who had that foresight so early on.)

When we were saying this 10 years ago, there was a lot of laughing from auto industry professionals and experts, as well as normal people. There was a lot of proud criticism of the idea that EVs could even become more than a niche portion of sales — 2% or 3%, for example. Very few people seemed to believe EVs could reach 10% of sales, let alone 100%.

Naturally, as EVs improved, as battery costs came down (which many of us predicted), and as EV sales ballooned, the laughing had to decrease and the skepticism had to go into hiding. As Tesla skyrocketed up the sales chart, as its stock grew to unfathomable levels, and as the Model Y actually became the best selling vehicle model of any kind in the world, the critics really had to step away from the microphone and perhaps even delete some of their social media posts. It must have been hard on those who were really convinced electric vehicles sucked and would go nowhere (literally and figuratively).

And it hasn’t really let up over the past several years. EVs went from one big success story to another. And it wasn’t all about Tesla. As the EV market grew, more and more competitive models came out, more and more auto brands got serious about EVs, and EV market share grew more and more. EV market share grew steadily in the US, but it exploded in Europe and China. In fact, we just got news that more than 50% of new car sales were electric cars in China in July. Europe has reached 22% share of the market. So, the critics and the people who simply don’t want the world to transition to EVs have had to stay quiet.

At the end of 2023, there was a little slowdown in EV sales growth with some companies and in some places. That was basically the first blip in the growing enthusiasm around EVs in years. So, what happened? At last, finally, skeptics and critics had a chance to bring up their long-held opinions or hopes that EVs, as they said 10 years before, wouldn’t take over the auto market. They have been clinging to this ever since. Every chance they get now, they talk about any limitations to EVs they can imagine and any hopes they have for why more people won’t buy them. They are clinging to the idea that they haven’t been completely wrong all along and the EV revolution will be halted in its tracks.

The problem for these critics and skeptics is that the underlying trends will continue: EVs will continue to get better, batteries will continue to come down in cost, gasmobiles will become increasingly expensive relatively speaking, and more and more of the market will switch to EVs. Just about 10 years ago, Norway was at about 15% EV market share. It’s now above 90%. The world is currently at 22% EV market share. In 10 years, we’ll see where we get, but, in my opinion, we won’t be anywhere close to 22%. Will there still be people in the auto industry or people who are simply slow to get used to change clinging to some critiques of electric vehicles? For sure. But they will be so outnumbered and so defeated that I venture to say they will get little attention and will have few ears listening to them and not causing their associated mouths to yawn. The arguments are already tired, out of date, and built on poor logic. However, at the moment, it seems we have to endure this resurgence of laggardly thought as a small portion of society tries to again argue what it was arguing 10 years ago. Keep calm and charge on. There is not even much to cling to, and EV sales continue to grow.