Getting to EV cars everywhere

In order to reduce (I’m not even thinking of getting rid of it altogether) our carbon footprint, we should turn our automobile fleet into electric vehicles (EV), but even though we now see more EVs on our roads, this too seems like an impossible task. 

Consider this, based on the latest available data, there are over 280 million cars, SUVs, and light trucks on our US roads. This number includes all types of vehicles, including both personal and commercial vehicles. In contrast to that huge number there might be 3 million EVs on the road, so just 1%.

This said, on average, the US sells around 17-18 million new cars, SUVs, and light trucks annually, of which almost 1 million were EVs in 2022. 

While it’s likely that this number will keep on growing, it will be limited by automakers to get access to batteries, bring prices down, improve the driving range of these EVs and erase years of negative propaganda by Big Oil. 

This leaves me with a rather pessimistic outlook. Even if all sales were EVs tomorrow, it would take between 30 and 40 years to get internal combustion engines off our American roads!