I don’t need to explain why the death of the internal combustion engine has been greatly exaggerated, Volvo’s announcement that it was getting out of the internal combustion engine business notwithstanding. Chris Isidore has already done it for me at CNN Tech:
The first reason is profitability. The stock of tiny Tesla (TSLA) may be worth more than either General Motors (GM) or Ford (F), but it has yet to report an annual profit. Traditional automakers are making billions of dollars selling millions of gasoline-powered cars each. No one has yet figured out a way to make a profit selling electric-only vehicles.
Here’s a little quiz question. At the present rate of electric vehicle sales when will there be no more internal combustion vehicles on the road? Answer: never.
159,000 EVs were sold in 2016. In comparison a total of 17.5 million light vehicles were sold. That’s a 1,000-fold difference.
Let me try another way of explaining it. Sales of EVs are not doubling every year. But let’s assume they were. If they were it would take six years for EV sales to equal sales of non-EVs. If EVs maintain a 38% increase every year it will take 12 years for EVs to equal non-EVs in sales. The time to turn over the entire fleet is 20 years.
In other words it is unlikely that I’ll ever see a time when EVs are the majority of cars on the road let alone the only cars on the road. And that’s assuming the present rate of increase and all of the technical and logistical problems are solved.
