Electric vehicle sales are expected to hit a record 9% of all passenger vehicles in the U.S. this year, according to Atlas Public Policy. That will be up from 7.3% of new car sales in 2022.
It will be the first time more than 1 million EVs are sold in the U.S. in one calendar year, probably reaching between 1.3 million and 1.4 million cars, the research firm predicts.
Although the numbers show significant progress for electrification, the nation is lagging behind countries like China, Germany and Norway.
EVs reached 33% of sales in China, 35% in Germany, and 90% in Norway for the first six months of 2023, according to a BloombergNEF EV outlook published in June. These figures include both battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid EVs.
That hit right in the feels, man. My city (metro area: 550k pop) has exactly two trains per day. Both arrive at about 2am and take over 8 hours to reach another major metro area. It’s pathetic.
I love going to Europe and being able to take the train everywhere, both inside the cities and between them. No, it’s not perfect, and both DB and the UK trains are having major service issues since they were outsourced to private agencies, but it’s still so very much better than the transit desert that is the US.
The US is building out more transit right now, mostly in streetcars and metros. We’re starting to make headway on that, but our intercity connectivity (outside of the NE corridor) is just lame.
Cincinnati?
That’s the commonly cited example among rail advocates. Yeah Ohio rail currently sucks, but the proposals I’ve seen for intercity rail seem quite robust. That said, you guys made a huge blunder selling that railroad.
No, Spokane. We are a terrible example of how to do rail in any form.
When I saw that they sold the rail line… It’s up there with Chicago selling all of their streets to a Saudi backed investment firm for 75 years.
Yeah that one’s gonna cost them a lot down the road. They might need state assistance to buy that thing out.