Electric car predictions for the future

An average of 4.5 million cars per year seems a bit high to me at this stage in the game. BUT I hope that they are correct.

As one who's does research in nanotechnology, their name sounds full of buzzwords.

Semi related future predictions.


Not bad really.

PeterW said:

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/201...-year-by-2013-says-chief/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Click to expand...

Interesting quote from Carlos Ghosn -

Mr. Ghosn said that Hertz and Enterprise were buying 500 Leafs. But more to the point, he said, the Volt was not really an electric car. “An electric car for me is a car in which the wheels are moving only by electricity,” he said. The Volt has a gas engine that kicks in after the electric battery has been depleted (between 25 to 50 miles), to help produce the electricity needed to keep the car moving.

Click to expand...

Hybridcars.com has 10 EV predictions for 2011.

1. The majority of people who drive a plug-in vehicle won't own it.
2. Automakers will get pushback from EV owners regarding the length of time
it takes to fully charge a vehicle.
3. Stop-start vehicles will arrive in the United States, albeit in small numbers.
4. Many EV charging stations will spend the majority of their time idle.
5. Fuel cell vehicles will be sold (sic) to fleets and consumers in small but growing
numbers.
6. Someone somewhere will have a bad EV experience and the media will
overreact.
7. The advanced battery category will heat up with M&A activity.
8. "Range anxiety" will prove to be more fiction than fact.
9. The best-selling EVs won't have four wheels.
10. The landscape for charging equipment will undergo a seismic shift as the
category swiftly moves toward becoming a commodity market.

(from Pike Research)

vfx said:

Hybridcars.com has 10 EV predictions for 2011.

1. The majority of people who drive a plug-in vehicle won't own it.
2. Automakers will get pushback from EV owners regarding the length of time
it takes to fully charge a vehicle.
3. Stop-start vehicles will arrive in the United States, albeit in small numbers.
4. Many EV charging stations will spend the majority of their time idle.
5. Fuel cell vehicles will be sold (sic) to fleets and consumers in small but growing
numbers.
6. Someone somewhere will have a bad EV experience and the media will
overreact.
7. The advanced battery category will heat up with M&A activity.
8. "Range anxiety" will prove to be more fiction than fact.
9. The best-selling EVs won't have four wheels.
10. The landscape for charging equipment will undergo a seismic shift as the
category swiftly moves toward becoming a commodity market.

(from Pike Research)

Click to expand...

Funny how most of these were dead wrong for 2012, let alone 2011.

doug said:

Funny how most of these were dead wrong for 2012, let alone 2011.

Click to expand...

Future predictions of technology have never been very accurate. Generally it takes a person of vision (and resources) to make the future happen.

Sure, but given how short term those predictions were, they were amazingly bad.

Well, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 10 seem to be based on wishful thinking rather than any kind of thoughtful research.

Or so painfully obvious they're not worth mentioning like "4. Many EV charging stations will spend the majority of their time idle."
That's Pike "Research" for you.

Though curable, #8 (Range Anxiety) turned out to be real.

jerry33 said:

Future predictions of technology have never been very accurate. Generally it takes a person of vision (and resources) to make the future happen.

Click to expand...

Due to revisionist history and faulty records/memories, sometimes past predictions are similarly inaccurate.

Amazing #6 has only happened in a plane.

vfx said:

Amazing #6 has only happened in a plane.

Click to expand...

Border is not counted? How come?

After a peer review study it was determined to be operator error.

prediction for 2015....

Toyota buys Telsa for 5 billion.
Press Quote:
The only successful north american ev manufacturer today announced the repayment of the DOE loan and the sale of Telsa Motors to Toyota (or Mercedes). Toyota announced that Tesla will become a sub brand (much like Audi) and will continue to pursue the electric drive train that Tesla is so well known for.


OK, so above is probably a slim chance, but my real prediction is
1. Leaf sells 15-20k units a year, and all other EV's besides Telsa (and the volt) struggle to hit 3000 a year.
2. Charge point and any other large scale charging infrastructure company goes bankrupt due to low demand for 30 amp level 2 charging. (too many instances of spots being ICE'd or not utilized for charging)
3. New designs for 160 mile range + EV's from major manufactures start hitting the showrooms by 2016. By then the tax credit is gone and sales are mild due to the expense of the cars.
4. Gen 3 is delayed till 2018 (with significant deliveries by 2019)

total EV sales won't hit 1 million until 2025

I've run the numbers and I think that Obama's prediction of 1 million plug-in vehicles by 2015 can work. It will be at the end of 2015, but that is still 2015. If the Gen III comes out in 2016 then I'll predict that we'll have 1 million pure EV's on the road by 2020.