I've put the
@David_Cary data for US BEV % sales in a spreadsheet (with thanks, and I am assuming he defintely means BEV%, not EV%), and I figured out the US BEV% for 2018 to make a longer series.
I've plotted that up against my dataset of the actual global BEV%, the actual global EV%, and the logistics curve that best fits the global EV%, see below.
I've also added in a series showing how well the US BEV% compares with the global BEV%. As you can see the US was adopting at about the same rate as the global adoption rate back in 2018-2019, but since then the USA has decoupled and slipped to about a 60% rate.
Assuming (heroically) that the fitted logistics S curve is a fair indication of the most likely global trajectory, and if one considers that for whatever reason the USA will continue to be a laggard at 60% or so, then the implication is the USA will reach 49% EV-penetration in motor vehicle sales in 2028.
Clearly there is some circularity in this as USA is a fair chunk of global motor vehicle sales (approx 20-21%) and so if USA is lagging then WOUSA must be correspondingly leading. But USA is only 20-21% and so this is a manageable circularity.
I have not tried to compute a US-specific S curve fit as the adoption data is too weak in small market sizes, and so too confused by noise in the data. It was only last year that I felt the global data was sound enough to develop an S curve, so it is premature to try to discern the curve signal in the noise for individual geographies or segments imho. These are best though of as offsets to the underlying global trend at this point in the cycle.
Following from that that it is not obvious what is the cause of the flip in the USA from being a pacing country to a lagging country. Was it a political issue, an economic issue, or a product availability issue, or something else, or a mix of all of these. Will it worsen, or improve. My own personal guess is some mixture of all of these. And to the extent that the US auto market is atypical in global terms (and to an extent it is) then this is both plausible in explanations of what is going on; and containable in analysis of this nature. My observation of US-ians is that when their wallets get heavily affected then they vote with their feet. Thus I expect that given that EV ownership (specifically BEV ownership) is becoming substantially cheaper than ICE ownership; then as compelling products become available in sufficient volume for each segment; then provided there are no overwhelming countercurrents I think US adoption of BEV will revert closer to the global mean. This would have the effect of pulling USA forwards to meet 50% in 2027 or even 2026. The overwhelming countercurrents is the biggest caveat in that as this is where US-politics might intervene, but that's not something I get a vote on.
(as an aside it seems to me that PHEV will peak at 5% soon, and then slide back to 3% by 2030, which is why I have not dwelt in any detail on them in this quickie analysis)
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(I dread to think about how many grad school masters essays I am accidentally responsible for !)