In fact, BEV sales increased 92 percent to 457,000 vehicles in 2021
I think that will continue. I have noticed an interesting thing recently in our household.
First, we, and Theresa in particular, were bothered by range anxiety because EVs still are significantly less convenient on long trips. Then came the revelation that our total number of "long drive" days not in rental cars is quite low. Doubling those doesn't actually change things much.
Second, we realized that most of our trips are outside the range of a plugin-hybrid, but well within the range of a BEV.
Then, just recently, we noticed how much *gas* anxiety we have. In the vast majority of our trips, we do not pass a gas station. We recently went on a hike with the plan to fill up at the gas station that is about 30 miles from the house, but 1 mile from this particular trailhead. It turned out that the pumps were all out of order and we were basically on empty. So we now had to make a 35-minute round trip detour, not counting time at the actual pump, just to get gas.
We realized that if we were driving and EV, we would just drive home and plug it in.
For us, a significant number of trips each year are oriented around getting gas. These result in more inconvenience than the rare inconvenience of needing to charge while on long drives.
Of course, we are in a very rare situation. I doubt many Americans frequently take 10-30 mile trips and do not pass a gas station. But it has me wondering what the profit margins of a gas station are and how many can sustain, say, 15% of the cars on the road being EVs. My feeling is that at 20% EVs, gas stations start folding en masse, which puts more and more Americans in our situation, where an EV charge is super convenient and gas is very inconvenient.
Anyway, we frequently arrive at the gas station with the fuel warning light on and we frequently forgo trips because we do not have enough gas. Paying attention to that has shifted Theresa from an EV skeptic to being really annoyed at the constant quest to find gas for the car. Every time we go out of our way for gas, she thinks, "wouldn't it be great to have an EV?"
All that to say that I think EV adoption will reach a tipping point once gas stations start to fold in large numbers and more and more people are making our calculation. The challenge is needing to hit that tipping point as soon as possible.