When I took my cross-country adventure to set a Guinness World Record for distance in 2013, there were roughly 250,000 electric vehicles across North America and Europe combined; that's like putting everyone in the city of Buffalo, NY into an electric vehicle. Not insignificant, but still a very small piece of the American/Euro landscape.
Today, there are roughly 1.4 million electric vehicles in those two markets, or roughly the size of the U.S. city of San Diego. That's tremendous growth in only 5 years!! By the U.S. city comparison, it's a growth from our 81st sized city to our #8 largest city in only 5 years.
To be fair, a lot of this growth has been in Europe. Taking Norway's lead, Germany introduced incentives for electric vehicles in 2016 and, as a result, will double EV sales in 2017 vs 2016. If the trend continues, they will become the largest EV market in Europe in 2018. With a strong sales year, expectations are that Europe will sell about 310,000 EVs in 2017.
In the U.S., experts estimate 2017 sales of EVs to approach 225,000 vehicles which includes a slight decline due to Tesla's production woes for their new Model S. While that sales volume is lower than that of Europe, the U.S. remains the single biggest market for EVs with an estimated 780,000 EV vehicles on the road out of the Americas/European total of 1.4 million.
In 2013, I proved that an electric car can cross all types of terrain, is reliable and was a viable form of transportation with existing power supplies. The world is proving that electric is a viable form of transportation for daily living AND, most importantly, a piece of our sustainability needs!
Take a trip down the electric vehicle memory lane with Chargepoint: