The US was home to around 38% of the global electric vehicle (EV) stock in 2012, but that still amounted to just 71,174 vehicles, according to the International Energy Agency’s most recent Global Electric Vehicle Outlook. There were more than 240 million cars and trucks on US roads in 2010, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
The US is a member of the Electric Vehicles Initiative (EVI), a 15-member government policy forum pushing to speed the introduction and adoption of EV’s worldwide. EVI member countries are concentrated in Europe, but also include Japan, India, China and South Africa. They hold more than 90% of global EV stocks, and are projected to account for 83% of EV sales between now and 2020.
While research and development efforts have succeeded in cutting battery costs by more than half between 2008 and 2012, from $1,000 per kilowatt hour (kWh) to just $485/kWh, the global EV stock, at around 180,000 at year-end 2012, was still less than 2% of the initiative’s goal of getting 20 million on the road by 2020, according to the report. But the IEA notes that EV sales more than doubled from 45,000 in 2011 to 113,000 in 2012.
It is worth noting that the above figures apply to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, battery electric vehicles and fuel cell electric vehicles. The IEA said in a separate report, Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013, that overall hybrid-electric vehicle sales passed the 1 million mark last year, reaching 1.2 million.
You can read the full Global Electric Vehicle Outlook report here:
