In 2017, several automakers and policymakers announced commitments to a transition to electric vehicles:
Toyota set a goal to sell more than 1 million electric vehicles by 2030; Volvo aims to beat Toyota by doing the same by 2025;
VW’s goal is 25% of its vehicle sales will be electric by 2025; BMW’s goal for that year is 15% to 25%;
Mercedes-Benz has allocated $11 billion and Volkswagen group around $40 billion dollars to the development of electric vehicles;
Norway has called for all new cars sold there to be electric by 2025; France, the United Kingdom, and the State of California aim to achieve the same by 2040; and
China has set a goal for 20% of new car sales to be electric by 2025.
Meanwhile actual sales are tiny. A total of 780,000 on-road PEVs have been sold in the U.S., representing just 0.3% of the 243 million passenger cars and light-duty trucks on the road. [PEVs include both plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs)]. In California, less than one percent are PEVs. PEVs accounted for only 1.1% of U.S. vehicle sales in 2017 and were on track to be less than 5% of sales even in California. Many of these are repeat sales to the same households, so an even smaller percent of households are adopting and experiencing these vehicles. And all this with years of purchase incentives, building of charging stations, and outspoken championing of PEVs by California government leaders.
There are no paths to meet the PEV commitments and promises being made by automakers and politicians unless consumers are engaged in the transition to electric drive. Evidence from California says consumers are not. The excitement among policymakers, automakers, and advocates as more PEV models enter the market place, more charging is installed, and more PEVs are sold each successive year is utterly lost on the vast majority of the car-buying public—even in California, touted as being among the global PEV market leaders. The problem is the number of car owning households that are paying attention to PEVs is not growing.
Research at the Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Research Center of the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies indicates few car-owning households are aware of a transition to PEVs and far fewer are actively engaged. Five surveys conducted from June 2014 to June 2017 assessed Californian car-owning households’ awareness of and engagement with PEVs.
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