Motor Mouth: An electric ‘revolution’ that never was

Despite what you’ve read, there is no electric car revolution.

Yes, I’ve seen the headlines. No, I’m not a climate change denier. And, more to the point, I don’t have any skin — shares in traditional automakers, a stake in a GMC dealership, etc. — in the game. It’s just that, despite all the media hype and predictions of 25 per cent market share right around the corner, there are previous few hard indications that the electric car is ascendant. 

For instance, with all the hype surrounding electric vehicles and the almost steady drumbeat of the incredible success of Tesla, would you care to guess how many purely battery-powered electric vehicles there are in Canada? 50,000? 100,000? 250,000? A million?

Actually, according to fleetcarma.com, as of December 31, 2016, there were 14,910 battery-powered electric vehicles prowling our highways and byways. That’s not how many cars Tesla has sold or how many EVs were sold in __canada in 2016, but the number of pure, battery-powered electric cars have been sold since the so-called electric revolution started with the introduction of Tesla’s Roadster in 2008.

To put that in perspective, according to DesRosiers Automotive Consultants, there were 25,226,688 passenger cars and light trucks in operation as of the same date. That means that, despite all the hype of the last five years, EVs still account for just 0.06 percent of the cars on the road today. In other words, one in every 1,700 cars that Canadians drive is powered by solely by electricity. Not quite as rare as hen’s teeth, but still not common enough — especially in Saskatchewan where there are only 32, or Newfoundland where there are but six — to qualify as a revolution.

But what about Tesla, you ask? What of its incredible conquest of the luxury electric segment? Well, full kudos to Mr. Musk, he has indeed performed the miraculous, forcing pretty much everyone in the luxury segment to pay homage to the phenomenal success of his Model S. In the recent history of automobiles, no success has been grander or as paradigm-shifting.

But, is it a sign of an EV revolution? 

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Unfortunately, it would appear not. If there were an actual revolution going on — the long anticipated “trickle down” that sees the technology that powers high-priced luxury models eventually filter into everyday cars — you’d think it would already be showing up in the sales charts. Unfortunately, that’s plainly not the case. Indeed, according to Fleetcarma, Nissan has only managed to move 44 more — 5,100 versus 5,056 — of its (semi) sensibly priced Leaf than Tesla has its $100,000+ Model S. 

Allow me a little more perspective here. Typically, top-of-the-line luxury sedans are outsold by midpriced compacts by a factor of some 20 or 30 to one. BMW, for instance, sells about 27 times as many 3 Series as it does 7s. Über sedans, like the Model S, account for less than 0.2 per cent of the Canadian market; compact passenger cars, like Nissan’s Leaf, claim a whopping 20 per cent. So while Tesla makes headline for outselling its Mercedes-Benz and BMW counterparts, Canada’s best selling EV – again, the Nissan Leaf – has but 0.4 percent of the compact passenger car market. Justify that all you want, but a bunch of rich dilettantes showing off their four-wheeled Patek Phillipes does not a revolution make.

Nor is that single marque dominance the sole purview of pure electrics. According to DesRosiers, as of July 2016, there were 193,437 hybrids of all marques on our roads. After more than 15 years of sales, those numbers still represent but 0.7 percent of the current Canadian fleet, but more importantly is that Toyota Motor Corporation alone has accounted for 66.9 per cent of all the gas/electric hybrids Canadians have ever purchased. Indeed, other than Ford (whose sales are waning) and Honda (which sold lots of Insights between 1999 and 2006, but just 11 hybrids as of July last year), few others sell more than a few hundred units a year. Indeed, take Toyota out of the hybrid segment and hybrids account for barely 0.2 percent of the cars on Canadian roads today.

Even more telling, however, is that while sales of battery-powered EVs — Tesla’s Model S, the Nissan Leaf et al. — are (modestly) increasing, the combined electrified segment is in something of a tailspin. After having peaked at 26,300 sales in 2012, electrified cars — again, EVs, PHEVs and gas/electric hybrids all together — accounted for just 23,544 sales in Canada for 2015 (a little less than 1.3 per cent of the total market).

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Sales numbers south of the border, though larger, paint a similar picture. While, again, sales of BEVs and PHEVs have increased in recent years, hybrid sales have plummeted from a peak of 3.0 per cent market share in 2013 to barely 2.0 per cent of the American market in 2016. Add it all up and, according to greencarreports.com, electrified vehicles accounted for 2.85 per cent of all American auto sales, a greater percentage than here in Canada but significantly less than the 3.2 per cent they captured in 2013. Even in the United States, it’s hard not to conclude that the increase in EV sales is just hybrid intenders moving into pure electric vehicles.

Essentially, what the numbers seem to be telling us is that the number of consumers willing to buy a car simply for its reduced environmental impact has peaked. And poor electric car sales aren’t the sole proof that, beyond the early adopters, the entire emissions-reduction movement has stalled, either; SUVs and pickups seem to reach record sales every month. As a result, despite the increase in the number of electrified vehicles on the market and model-by-model improvements in fuel consumption, the average fuel economy of cars sold in the U.S. has declined steadily since 2014. 

It also seems like automakers are getting increasingly desperate in their quest for the elusive electric magic bullet (they, after all, need to sell EVs to meet American Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards). Honda recently announced its Clarity BEV with but 120 kilometres of range because, as the heretofore successful automaker plainly admits, it’s currently impossible to make a price-point-sensitive EV that is profitable, roomy and has long range. 

Indeed, except for an (unlikely) spike in fuel prices, it would appear that little short of the proverbial gun to the head is going to move mainstream consumers into electric vehicles. A number of governments — Germany and The Netherlands, among others — are considering just such steps, proposing outright bans of internal combustion powered automobiles. Such dictatorial mandates may prove effective, but I don’t think it’s the revolution everyone has been talking about.