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Transportation

Electric Vehicle Sales Doubled In 2021, With More Now Sold Each Week Than Entire Year In 2012 (independent.co.uk) 156

Posted by BeauHD from the picking-up-steam dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: The electric vehicle (EV) market is soaring, with 130,000 cars sold globally each week, roughly equivalent to sales for the entire year in 2012. Sales of EVs more than doubled in 2021, even with supply chain snarls and pandemic-related shrinking of demand for gas-powered cars. New data, from the influential intergovernmental International Energy Agency (IEA), revealed that 6.6 million electric cars were sold last year -- twice the number of 2020 -- making up 9 per cent of the global car market. IEA says the growth is "particularly impressive" over the last three years. The number has about tripled from 201 when 2.2 million electric cars were sold. "We estimate there are now around 16 million electric cars on the road worldwide, consuming roughly 30 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year, the equivalent of all the electricity generated in Ireland," the IEA reported last week.

More than half of all electric cars are being sold in China (3.4 million), but the market is steadily growing in Europe and the United States. In the US, electric car sales more than doubled in 2021. More than 500,000 new EVs hit the highways, accounting for 4.5 per cent of the market. Tesla is still the strongest player, accounting for more than half of all electric car sales. A "generous" tax-credit system for EVs in the US may be influencing new car buyers (although it doesn't apply to Tesla and General Motor vehicles, IEA notes). In Europe, 2.3 million electric cars were sold in 2021, about half of which were plug-in hybrids, against a backdrop of tightened carbon emissions standards and more subsidies being rolled out by countries in the bloc. Germany made up the largest share of the European market last year where more than one in three cars sold was an electric model.
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Electric Vehicle Sales Doubled In 2021, With More Now Sold Each Week Than Entire Year In 2012 More

Electric Vehicle Sales Doubled In 2021, With More Now Sold Each Week Than Entire Year In 2012

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  • I'm optimistic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Monday February 07, 2022 @07:48PM (#62247767)
    I believe electric cars are a better future, however, there are still many obstacles to overcome before they become mainstream. High upfront cost, astronomical battery replacement and repair charges, lack of fast charging stations, too many unneeded electronics, and being tied to a mother ship just to name a few. We need an electric car with the basics. Trying to make these things drive themselves is just stupid. Big ass hard to navigate giant screens instead of simple buttons on the dash? Watch movies on that same screen?? Tied to the Internet? Ugh, I just want to run down to the local store for a loaf of bread. I don't want a car company knowing when I do that. I'm not going to watch Netflix while putting "AI" in charge of getting me there ... ever. I believe it will be a while before ICE autos go out of fashion.

    • Re:I'm optimistic (Score:5, Insightful)

      by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Monday February 07, 2022 @08:15PM (#62247849)
      My Tesla has an 8 year unlimited mile powertrain warranty on the largest battery Tesla makes (100KWh). To replace it out of warranty costs $20,000. My last car was a Mercedes Benz ML350 SUV that had transmission issues, engine needed rebuilding at 100,000 miles, and oil changes that cost a few hundred every 7,000 miles. The cost of the battery is high, but given the relative infrequency of having to maintain electric cars because of their vastly simpler power trains, it makes it about even on the maintenance costs, until the electric car wins because of that insane warranty.
      • Sounds like you bought a lemon. Hundreds to change oil?? The local 15 minute shop can do it for $40. I can do it myself for half that. Your problems sound self inflicted.
        • Labour to perform an oil change is probably not the issue - the amount / cost of oil is. My vehicle requires 8 quarts of fully synthetic. Show me where I can get the oil for $40 and I'll do it myself. Normally it costs ~$150 to get an oil change. This is about the same price as if I were to purchase 2, 5 quart jugs of Mobil 1 fully synthetic from Walmart. Oil is not cheap, but the labour to perform an oil change is.
          • There are other brands of full synthetic that cost much less than M1. Very few models require M1. I am aware of a few HiPo's that require it. And even M1 has multiple levels and I suspect you are required to get the ESP variety of M1. I have 2 HiPo cars and only one requires the ESP.
            • For the record, my car took 8 liters of 0W/50 full synthetic which at the time was running me $12 a liter. Then there was waste disposal, oil filter, and labor. So yeah; taking it to get its service did cost quite a bit. I had a transmission rebuilt at $4k because in those cars they are 7 forward gears and sealed, and I also had to do the brakes every 50,000 miles. Without regen, you go through pads fast.
              • I was merely pointing out the average car does not need M1 full synthetic ESP oil. My one hipo taxes full synthetic and the oil change at the dealer is 75. I could probably do it myself for 50. I can't help you if you drive like a maniac. You must run thru tires like underwear.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by boskone ( 234014 )

                  I think the great grandparent or so poster was saying that

                  1. people say that luxury battery replacement on a high end tesla is 20K
                  2. an EQ gasoline car (a 7 speed mercedes) has similar or worse lifecycle costs to get a high performance luxury car (engine = $15k?, Tranny $4K, plus expensive and frequent brake and oil service jobs)

                  This isn't comparing a 100K electric car with every option checked to a Ford Escort, this is a fair comparison for a high end, high performance german gas car to a high end, high

                  • We don't know the situation of the poster though. Were they doing track days with it? If so the EV may have more problems than the ICE. Until recently the S could not even make it around the track at Nuremburg. Although ironically, I think I have seen numbers for things like a Ford Escort running the track. Usage matters. Heck does an EV maintain warranty if tracked? Most ICE do not, but a few warrant even with track abuse. And as I pointed out, if the poster was running thru a set of brakes every 50K, they

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ambvai ( 1106941 )

          It's probably somewhere between a regional and a Benz thing; I had one about fifteen years ago, and back then, it would run about 150 for an oil change at the dealership, and the quickie oil places wouldn't touch it out of liability issues. (And battery changes were even worse...)

          • I had to replace the battery in mine once. It was under the passenger seat, and required the seat to be removed. Once you put it back, the sensor needs to be re-engaged with the cars computer, which only the dealership can do at a $200 fee. The battery was a 900 cold cranking amps long battery that was $300. I was shocked at how much that repair had cost me.
      • Mercedes are garbage. Anyone that wants the most out of their car buys a Honda or Toyota.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      lack of fast charging stations

      Is this a big issue? I can understand the problem of "lack of charging stations" as being far more pressing than fast charging stations.

      I mean, if you had a slow charging station - say a 1.5kW station everywhere you go, wouldn't that be better than having a 150kW station? If you go between the office and home, 1.5kW charges around 5-8 miles per hour, so 8 hours of charging at the office will get you between 40-64 miles, covering all but the longest commutes.

      Its better than havi

      • You're hilarious. 8 hours of charging at the office? there are going to be outlets in parking lots of office buildings for cars? no, there won't. no employer is going to put out for that. Just as apartment building owners aren't going to pay for an outlet for every parking spot.

        Fast charging stations are necessary, REALLY fast, less than 15 minutes or this electric vehicle thing will not fly in these united states. Not to be negative though, a switch out and go battery swap could be done faster than fi

        • That's the ticket right there ... interchangeable batteries. Tesla was once working on this and I wish they would have continued. If I could drive an EV up to a station and have the battery swapped out, for say $20 in 15 minutes or less, then yes, EV has a bright future. End of life batteries would also have a place to start their recycling process instead of ending up in land fills. The price of an EV could drop dramatically if the battery were not an issue and 10+ year old EVs could stay on the road. Woul
          • I would like to add that all EV manufacturers would need to get on board and develop a universal battery. Treat the battery like gasoline. All ICE cars run on the same fuel, all EVs do as well. The battery, not just the electricity stored in them, need to be treated as the fuel.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Klaxton ( 609696 )

          The usual 240 mile range of modern EV's is enough to cover most people's daily driving for a 5-7 days. You can charge them up to 80% in 15-30 minutes at a fast charger. 2-3 miles range per hour on a 120v wall socket, that could top it off overnight for most daily driving. Nobody will need to keep their car plugged in to a charger at work every day.

        • It blows your mind that an employer would shell out a few thousand bucks (one-time) per employee to provide a useful amenity? That's peanuts in the grand scheme of the cost of employment.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jbengt ( 874751 )

            It blows your mind that an employer would shell out a few thousand bucks (one-time) per employee to provide a useful amenity?

            Different budget.
            For maybe $2,000 per private office you can give each one individual temperature control. But most corporate people in charge of design and construction won't go for the costs, and will have one thermostat shared among 4 or 5 separate rooms, even if each person working in those spaces is getting paid a good 6-figure salary.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ksevio ( 865461 )

          It's not unrealistic to imagine more buildings will provide charging infrastructure, both included in the parking space cost and charged separately. Same with city streets having posts that cars could connect to for charging.

        • This was the standard in a lot of places, back in the day, for block heaters. It's not farfetched.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )

          there are going to be outlets in parking lots of office buildings for cars? no, there won't. no employer is going to put out for that.

          They are already doing that in a lot of cases. And if they're building new parking, the city I work in requires 2% of the spaces to have chargers put in, plus infrastructure for another 18% of the spaces.

    • For better or worse, ICE vehicles will be catching up in some of these areas, instead of EV's dropping them. Touchscreens may be sold as a luxury, but mostly they're just cheaper to make compared to bespoke physical switches and instruments. Fully autonomous cars are a long ways off, but mandatory partial automation like automatic emergency braking, and monitoring drivers for being awake and sober, is just going to keep coming.

    • I believe it will be a while before ICE autos go out of fashion.

      Tony Seba and his think tank have predicted the future, and according to them, ICE autos will be out of fashion within the next decade at latest.

      They drew a curve that predicted battery prices would come way down, and reality followed the curve. Projecting that curve out just a couple more years predicts that BEVs will cost less than ICEVs. BEVs are already cheaper to operate and cheaper to maintain; if they are cheaper to buy, that will disr

      • This whole conversation is sounding like "the year of the Linux desktop".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        If you can use a "ride hailing" app and a robot car came and picked you up, and it was really inexpensive, maybe you don't need a car at all.

        If I still lived in the city, I mostly wouldn't need a car. But I would much rather get into a taxi or Uber that has a person in charge compared to getting into a driverless car that the previous passengers threw up in, had messy sex in, or god knows what else.

    • We need an electric car with the basics.

      There *is* the Chevy Bolt and the Nissan LEAF. Both of these are great, car-like cars. It's just unfortunate that Chevy has handled the Bolt battery recall so shabbily. It's almost over, though, and as a result every Bolt in the world (including used ones) is going to have a brand new battery. Good time to get a used EV.

  • "A "generous" tax-credit system for EVs in the US may be influencing new car buyers..."

    Oh yeah. Tax credits. That must be the reason.

    Couldn't possibly be gas prices that have doubled in the last 2 years, rampant inflation, 30% mark-up on new and used cars, and generally dismissing everything else that politics has managed to fuck up.

  • Wait a minute: plug in hybrids are EVs? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smoot123 ( 1027084 ) on Monday February 07, 2022 @08:16PM (#62247857)

    Woah Nellie. From the fine summary:

    In Europe, 2.3 million electric cars were sold in 2021, about half of which were plug-in hybrids,

    That is not what I hear when I hear "EV". Sure, a plug-in hybrid might travel entirely on battery for some trips but they're going to be burning gas for many others. For example, I couldn't drive to my office and back without recharging, not in most models.

    Just curious: how many other people think "electric vehicles" includes plug-in hybrids?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • I think the 150 Lightning is a really smart move. Many people I know have truck for local jobs and work, and a car for actual long distance driving, so making the local vehicle electric is just smart. Add into that the extra torque of the EV and it's a no brainer for a work vehicle. I think ford has also been marketing it well as a natural improvement upon pickups, rather than an eco-alternative.

    • Just curious: how many other people think "electric vehicles" includes plug-in hybrids?

      50%. I mean it's literally half of the PHEV acronym :-P

      • Just curious: how many other people think "electric vehicles" includes plug-in hybrids?

        50%. I mean it's literally half of the PHEV acronym :-P

        And if the headline, article summary, or my comment used the term "PHEV", that would all be perfectly clear. But none of them did.

        It seems to me having a "PHEV" acronym implies "EV" (the term actually used) doesn't include "PH". That's what I found misleading. Maybe I'm just out of date and EV has become an umbrella term for any electrically powered vehicle, both battery and hybrid.

    • EV is a class of vehicle that has an electric drivetrain to drive at least 1 axle of the vehicle. EV tells you nothing about the power source for the electricity.

      Unfortunately, many people use the term EV when they mean BEV which is a Battery Electric Vehicle. A BEV is a sub-class of EV.

      A hydrogen fuel electric vehicle is a FCEV which a sub-class of EV.

      A plugin-hybrid electric vehicle is a PHEV which a sub-class of EV.

      The answer to your question of "how many other people think "electric vehicles" includes p

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • I wouldn't fully consider a plugin an "electric vehicle", but my 2014 Volt has 140,000 miles with at least 90,000 of those miles being purely electric.

        So, it's been an "electric car" (running off of grid energy) for more than half of its miles driven.

        Thanks. I was wondering about that. Do you know if there's any fleet-wide statistics on this? IOW, across the entire US, what portion of miles driven by a plug-in hybrid are using electricity from a wall socket versus generated by the on-board ICE?

        Assuming I was still commuting to an office, my guess is it would be about 50/50. I think I could generally make it one way on battery and would use gas on the way back. I don't personally see myself recharging at work (and perhaps that's why I don't have a plug-i

  • 130,000 cars sold globally each week, roughly equivalent to sales for the entire year in 2012

    Ok, sure, and more EV cars have been sold than gas-powered cars sold during the roman empire.
    Seriously though why chosen 2012?

  • I'll buy one tomorrow (Score:3)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday February 07, 2022 @10:56PM (#62248219) Journal

    ...if someone can sell me a comfortably-sized (ie a Tesla-comparable, not some micro-mini) car with even as little as 200 mile range AND the ability to recharge in 5 mins.

    I routinely drive 400-600 mile trips because frankly I find driving 10 hours vastly more comfortable than driving an hour to the local airport, arriving 2 hours early for the flight, flying for 1-2 hours, then screwing around for 30+ min to get my bags, to screw around for another hour to get a rental car, to drive to my customers who are often 1-2 hours from THEIR airport.

    • I routinely drive 400-600 mile trips

      Wait. And you do so taking sub 5min breaks? Why are you so reckless endangering yourself and others on your roadtrip. Be a responsible driver and take a minimum 15min break every 2 hours before you kill someone through your drowsy inattentiveness.

      Oh but I guess you don't get tired driving long durations. It's okay. I only had half a bottle of vodka but I'm still good to drive! Yes I'm comparing you to a drunk driver because studies have compared people who drive more than 2 hours without a relatively long b

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Striek ( 1811980 )

        I routinely drive 400-600 mile trips

        Wait. And you do so taking sub 5min breaks? Why are you so reckless endangering yourself and others on your roadtrip. Be a responsible driver and take a minimum 15min break every 2 hours before you kill someone through your drowsy inattentiveness.

        Oh but I guess you don't get tired driving long durations. It's okay. I only had half a bottle of vodka but I'm still good to drive! Yes I'm comparing you to a drunk driver because studies have compared people who drive more than 2 hours without a relatively long break (not 5min) to drunk drivers, and you share a lot in common.

        Citation needed.

        I too routinely drive 400-600 mile trips. One frequent trip is Toronto to Thunder Bay, which if you're unfamiliar with Ontario, is a 16 hour drive and I usually split that into two days (although on rare occasions I'll do it in one day), with a stop for lunch. On some routes, there isn't even a suitable place to take a break the roads are so desolate.

        What you're not realizing is that for me, the long drive *is* the relaxing part of the trip. On such a long drive, most of it is done on mostly

        • Citation needed.

          No there really isn't. There's a good reason truck driving duration without a break is regulated. If I told you the sky is blue and you wrote citation needed I would tell you to go fuck yourself. Consider this me being marginally nicer.

          What you're not realizing is that for me, the long drive *is* the relaxing part of the trip.

          No I understood that. Like I said I too can down a bottle of vodka and *THINK* that I'm okay to drive like the fucking moron that we both are. Here's a hint: Drowsy drivers die because they think they're fine and relaxed. As do those with waning attention.

          Now you have some re

      • Hello European or City-Dweller, welcome to the bulk of America.

        A 15 min break every two hours - what sort of medication are you ON?

        As far as truck driver rest breaks, at least in THIS country they are required to take 30 min of breaks over an ELEVEN HOUR span of driving (out of 14 hours).

        15 min every 2 hours is asinine. Just because you apparently have restless leg syndrome and can't sit still doesn't mean the rest of us can't sit comfortably for hours at a time and be just fine.

        I must be a hell of a drive

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Most Teslas are actually quite small. They are very low because it makes them more efficient, so it's not hard to find another EV that has the same or more space than say a Model 3.

      I don't know which are available in your country, but meeting the 200 mile range requirement around here you have:

      Polestar 2
      Hyundai Kona
      Hyundai Ioniq 5
      Kia eNiro
      Kia eSoul*
      Kia EV6
      MG ZS EV Long Range
      Nissan Leaf 62kWh
      Jaguar iPace
      Opel Ampera-e
      Audi Turd
      Mercedes EQC
      Mercedes EQS
      Porsche Taycan
      Xpeng P7
      Peugeot e-2008
      VW ID3
      VW ID4
      Ford Mach-E

      • Hyundai Kona

        Curiously, Hyundai makes both a gasoline and electric version of the Kona. The latter is specifically called either "Kona Electric" or "Kona EV."

  • "We estimate there are now around 16 million electric cars on the road worldwide, "

    There are approximately 1000 million cars on the road worldwide.

    You do the math. At say 35 million cars a year (currently 6.6 million) it will take 30 years to replace the fleet.

    • It will take about 15 years to replace the fleet of ICE cars with BEV. You have not considered that the size of the fleet of cars will shrink, especially in the short-term over the next 7 years.

      You can already see in Europe that 1 new BEV car is sold for every 2 ICE cars. The ICE market is collapsing while the BEV market is ramping up rapidly. This is know as the Osbourne effect.

      Also you need to consider that fuel stations will be closing down during this transition period due to reduced demand for fuel. Th

  • Speculative timeline:

    2035: Sales of EVs exceed those of ICE cars.

    2045: No more new ICE cars made.

    2055: Sales of second hand ICE cars below those of EVs.

    2065: ICE cars become collector's items than only the well-off can afford to run and maintain.

    2075: ICE cars not allowed in public roads. The vast majority of gas stations transitioned to electric charging stations.

    2085: Running an ICE car is affordable only for the really wealthy.

    22nd century: Any existing ICE car in a working condition is a museum item wor

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      Most countries have banned new ICE production from 2035, and some (e.g. the UK) from 2030.

      So your timescale is at least 10-15 years out. But otherwise accurate.

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