THE EV ECONOMY CONTINUES ITS RAPID RISE

By Dan Gearino -Inside Climate News

As I was driving from Ohio to Iowa last month for Christmas, I noticed more electric vehicles than ever before. Lots of Teslas, Rivians, and others.

This tracks with the broader trend of rapid growth in EV sales, a trend that auto analysts are predicting will continue.

“The battery-electric vehicle market continues to outpace the overall market in sales, and a new milestone is on the horizon: 1 million EVs sold in the U.S. in 2023,” analysts for Cox Automotive said last month in an essay with predictions for the new year.

The prediction of 1 million units sold is a pretty safe one. In 2022, automakers sold 576,408 EVs in the first three quarters, despite severe constraints in the availability of some models because automakers had difficulty obtaining parts.

The market is going to grow due to the combination of increased availability of existing models and the debut of 30 or so new models.

One of the big sellers should be the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup. The model was available in 2022, but the supply was much less than demand as Ford worked to ramp up production.

Among the new models that could be big sellers: the Chevrolet Silverado EV, the Tesla Cybertruck, the Hyundai Ioniq 6, and the Nissan Ariya.

The gasoline version of the Silverado is one of the most popular vehicles sold in the U.S., behind the F-150 and Ram 1500.

General Motors is making the debut of the Silverado EV a focal point of its larger shift to electric vehicles. Some versions of the model should go on sale in the spring as part of a gradual rollout. (Car and Driver has a rundown of the model’s features, including a range of up to 400 miles, and AutoBlog has some recent spy shots of the model during testing.)

Ram also is entering the fray with an electric version of the 1500, but it won’t be available until 2024.

This sets up one of the most intriguing subplots in the EV market, as the makers of the best-selling pickups compete on price and features to gain an advantage in the market to come, and as EV-only brands also vie for attention and sales.