Mass adoption is definitely inevitable, and the growth rates of the EV market are huge, but buying an electric vehicle today is still not a straightforward decision - especially in single car households. The range and charging infrastructure doesn’t yet provide a credible alternative to that of internal combustion engines.

It’ll come though. As ranges and charging speeds improve, it’ll become as easy (if not easier) to charge your car than fill the fuel tank.

There are also challenges with costs. Batteries represent a huge proportion of the cost of the vehicles and don’t come cheap. So there’s also a bit of a chicken and egg situation when it comes to volumes and economies of scale. At the moment an EV often represents a more expensive initial outlay versus a traditional power train.

I’m sad. I could witter on about this stuff all day…

While good news, some caution: bit of a sensationalist title - EV car sales hit $1tn cumulatively over the last ten years. That represents less than half of a single year of all auto sales.

Adoption rates are growing, and legislation on new sales needing to be zero emission is helping, but it probably won’t be until the back end of this decade that we’ll begin to see the tipping point in favour of EV - and even then it’ll only be in some vehicle segments and in some countries.

Source: Am product strategist with global carmaker.