e to watch it charge. For road trips, you can pull into a public fast-charging station and the car can fast charge in 20 or 30 minutes, while you stop for a snack and stretch your legs. These kinds of fast chargers are the exact kinds of investments that will fuel the projected growth noted above.
Why are consumers hesitant to embrace EVs in larger numbers? Costs? Cultural preferences? Lack of education about the benefits?
There has actually been significant growth and adoption of electric vehicles around the world, and increased sales in the U.S., in part due to consumer demand for sustainable and cleaner transportation fuel options.
EV sales increased 26 percent in 2017 over 2016, and as of June 2018, there were more than 880,000 EVs on the road in the U.S. Looking ahead, more than 101 plug-in electric vehicles have been announced by the world’s automotive manufactures. Of these, more than a third will be a plug-in SUV or crossover, one of the fastest growing market segments in only the US, but also the world.
While these numbers do show significant growth and interest in electrification of transportation, there are still challenges to address. We keep these question central to our research in this area and much of it will be discussed at our Electrification 2018 conference in August.