1,000,000 Electric Vehicles on the Road by 2015

1,000,000 Electric Vehicles on the Road by 2015

Written by brightadmin on . Posted in EV Market Development

“We can break our dependence on oil…and become the first country to have one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. The future is ours to win,” President Obama said in his January 2011 State of the Union address. Some critics believe that this goal is overly ambitious, citing the fact that it took 10 years for Hybrid vehicles to reach the 3% market share, which is the same share the Obama Administration is hoping electric vehicles will reach in 4 years. But what differentiates this ambitious electric vehicle goal from Hybrids or other alternative-fueled vehicles is that the government is investing significant resources in it. According to a US Department of Energy report titled The Recovery Act: Transforming America’s Transportation Sector, released July , 2010:
As part of the Department of Energy’s $12 billion investment in advanced vehicle technologies, the Department is investing more than $5 billion to electrify America’s transportation sector. These investments under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and DOE’s Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program are supporting the development, manufacturing, and deployment of the batteries, components, vehicles, and chargers necessary to put millions of electric vehicles on America’s roads.
The goal of these investments is to support the infrastructure that will support electric vehicle ownership:
  • increase number of nation-wide electric vehicle charging stations from 500 today to 20,500 by 2012
  • decrease the cost of 100 mile range batteries 70% from $33,000 today to $10,000 in 2015;
  • decrease the weight of batteries 33% from 333kg to 222kg.
These infrastructural gains will help pave the way for the 1,000,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2015. Additionally, all of the major car manufactures are releasing various types of electric vehicles as quickly as they can roll them off the assembly lines: 20,000 Nissan Leaf all-electric vehicles are already on order nation-wide. In 1999, the electric vehicle industry group The Electrification Coalition published an in-depth study titled The Electrification Roadmap. Their findings forecast there will be 14 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020 and that 75% of all light-duty vehicle miles traveled by 2040 will be in electric vehicles: even more aggressive assumptions than the Obama administration. Regardless of whether or not you agree that the goals set by organizations like The Electrification Coalition or the Obama administration, its hard to argue with the facts that transitioning to electric vehicles is creating jobs, spurring investment and well underway.

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