A view on electric vehicles taking over – possibly a pessimistic one?

What would the world look like if electric cars took the lead in market share by 2030? “Couldn’t happen,” you say?

Consider the ramping up of some of the most basic items that have conquered the American market over the past century. Refrigerators went from a luxury item to 60 percent household penetration during the Depression and World War II. Technologies we used to live without including PCs, the Internet, and cell phones have become an integral part of daily life.

Once a breakthrough gets its footing, the rise to mainstream requirement is meteoric and, for reasons unknown (Copernicus has yet to weigh in), the rocket burn lasts about 15 years as the chart above indicates. Trace the rise of both electricity and automobiles. Radios had the sharpest rise of all, which may be why the 1920s were known as the Radio Days. Since the war, color TVs, microwaves, VCRs, PCs, the Internet and cellphones have all caught on as fast as radio. The air-conditioning vector appears to have been bent by the oil embargo in 1973. Auto production sputtered and coughed during the Depression, and throughout the war years, as factories churned out tanks and airplanes. It is not a coincidence that when the stock market peaked in 1929, auto production did too; neither would exceed the 1929 level until 1953.

We are about to find out if electric vehicles can make their mark and become mainstream. The launch sequence and liftoff phase (now barely underway) will soon reveal the extent of their fuel supply, i.e. How much interest will consumers have in EVs when a 200-mile-per-charge car costs less than $25,000? When a 60 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery costs $9,000, there will be plenty of room in the budget to build a lightweight car around it. (UBS says that at $150 per kWh, the key variable in the calculation above, the EV market will take off.

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