What started as a trickle of a few Electric Vehicles (EVs) has turned into a flood of models from virtually every single manufacturer. Hats off to Tesla for opening the floodgates, and making GM’s EV1 a crude and distant memory. While the specifications for some of the new cars coming out in 2020 are still getting fined tuned —battery pack capacity, horsepower, range — the 2020 EVs look pretty impressive.
Like all successful new products, EV market adoption goes through phases: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. We are still at the innovators stage in most of the world. California is leading in the U.S., with China clearly on a path to be the leading EV market. For cost, reliability and environmental reasons, EVs are destined to represent the majority of vehicles on roads within a few decades.
Nevertheless, before EVs dominate they must be comparable to gasoline engines in terms of range and cost. Continuing reductions in the cost of batteries solve both problems. Not only are EVs becoming less expensive because batteries are less expensive, but larger batteries are going into EVs — giving these vehicles comparable ranges to gasoline engines.
For more about model specifications, including EPA MPGe ratings, ranges, and costs of 2020 Electric Vehicles, please tune in to this week’s Energy Show.
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