On the Electric Vehicle Adoption Curve

Frequent commenter Glenn Doty writes on my recent post concerning the EV adoption rate:

Your source states that 67,200 EV’s have been sold this year, but that number is a worldwide total sales figure.

Total worldwide sales of ICE’s are north of 60 million thus far this year… so roughly one EV is sold for every 1000 ICEV’s.  I don’t think you’ve gotten enough penetration to confirm that this will be anything but an extreme niche.

We agree on the coal sourced electricity, of course.  But I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’ve seen coal usage increase 7% YOY when comparing 2012 to 2013…  We’re not going to see coal removed from the grid anytime soon, which means that EV’s won’t be as clean as ICE’s anytime soon. *shrug*

For what it’s worth, I would really like to be wrong here (concerning the near-term emissions profile of EV’s), but I don’t believe I am.

My response:

I believe that this is a rare case in which you are wrong.  I don’t predict a niche; I see this as an integral part of the march to sustainable transportation. I’m confident that, given the developments in smart grid and better power transmission, EVs will act to absorb off-peak wind — and they’ll also be deployed in microgrids whose generation sources are exclusively renewable, e.g., Army base Hunter Liggett out here in California, with its 2 MW (soon to be 4MW) solar array.  In addition, I am more bullish than you about our decommissioning coal plants.