Pace Of EV Adoption Must Quadruple To Reach Illinois' Goal

Authored by Mark Glennon and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

It will take a mighty big change of fortune for the electric vehicle (EV) industry to meet Illinois’ goal of one million EVs on the road in Illinois by 2030.

Gov. JB Pritzker repeated that target last week, but trends are pointing somewhere else.

The hard numbers are EV registrations in Illinois, published by the Illinois Secretary of State. For the most recent 12-month period, Illinois added just 32,478 vehicles to its EV registration rolls. That’s 8,120 per quarter.

But to reach the target of one million by 2030, that number would have to increase to about 34,000 per quarter — a four-fold increase, as shown in this chart:

Those numbers may be generous because they assume that all registered EVs will stay on the road through 2030. More importantly, in the latest quarter, new EV registrations dropped to just 4,997, well below the average for the year of 8,120 used above to calculate the needed 4X improvement.

The recent drop in the quarterly increase in EV registrations no doubt reflects the new reality for EVs, which was summed up in a CNBC article last week headlined, “EV euphoria is dead. Automakers are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans.” From that CNBC article:

Now the hype is dwindling, and companies are again cheering consumer choice. Automakers from Ford, General Motor, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans.

Even U.S. EV leader Tesla, which is estimated to have accounted for 55% of EV sales in the country in 2023, is bracing for what “may be a notably lower” rate of growth, CEO Elon Musk said in late January.

The gap between Illinois’ target and the EV adoption rate is roughly consistent with the numbers at a national scale, where EV sales need to rise 500 percent by 2032 to hit federal emissions targets.

EV optimists point to the expectation of lower priced vehicles coming to showrooms soon and more charging stations coming online, shortages of which have impaired EV demand. They also point to consistent year-over-year improvement in EV sales. That may be true, but a 4X jump in the rate of EV adoption looks questionable at best, and record sales are not enough. To make the EV industry financially viable, far more sales are needed than at the current pace.

So far, Illinois seems unconcerned, and more taxpayer money will go into the effort. Last week, the Illinois Department of Transportation announced round one of the Illinois National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program, which will provide up to $50 million for the construction of 46 charging stations across the state.

Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have been bet on EVs, making it a historic chapter in government central planning. So far, the numbers look bad.