The state’s electric vehicle market did considerably well last year and will continue to grow this year. California is on pace to reach 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles by 2025, which is earlier than the target set by Gov. Jerry Brown. This is according to a report released last month by Next 10, a Silicon Valley-based think tank, and Beacon Economics in Los Angeles. The joint report is predicting that 2018 sales will piggyback on a 29.1 percent increase of zero-emission vehicle sales in California in 2017. Noel Perry, founder of Next 10, stated,
The trends in California are all good for the continued increase in sales of electric vehicles. We talk about how smartphones became ubiquitous in a short period of time. It is possible ZEVs can go the route of smartphones by 2040.
Gov. Jerry Brown set a new goal last month of having 5 million zero-emission vehicles in California by 2030. According to Beacon Economics, there are currently 337,483 zero-emission vehicles that have been sold in California, which is almost 5 percent of the state’s market share and is up from the 3.6 percent in 2016. There were also 1 million global passenger electric vehicle sales sold in 2017, which is up from 500,000 in 2015. The greatest issue that could hold back the sales of more electric vehicles is the fact that there aren’t enough charging stations in the state. According to the joint report, California has 16,549 public charging outlets, most in the nation, but that is only 0.05 charging outlets per each zero-emission vehicle on the road in the state. Hopefully, the state is able to increase the number of charging stations to keep up with the number of electric vehicles in the state.
