By 2023, more than 7% of cars sold in the United States will be electric vehicles. In some parts of the world, such as Norway, this percentage was as high as 20%. In California, where I live, nearly 60% of people shopping for a car in 2021 said they would at least consider purchasing an electric car.
This increase in demand comes after years of declining sales. In 2010, fewer than 100,000 cars on American roads were electric. That number surpassed 1 million in 2018, an increase of more than 80% from the previous year.
What explains this seemingly unexpected increase in recent years?
The key word here is ‘apparently’. And the answer reveals an interesting history that most people are completely unaware of.
I teach entrepreneurship at the USC Marshall School of Business, and I have been studying the EV market for over a decade. When I ask students, “How long have electric cars been commercially available?” most of them will answer five years, or ten, maybe twenty. One person might point to an electric car launched by General Motors in the 1990s that he can’t seem to remember the name of.
But every now and then a precocious person—usually in the back row—raises his hand and answers, “Since the early 1900s.”
That’s almost the right answer.
Electric vehicles and the long road to adoption
EVs are a new, old technology. Most people don’t know that they have been commercially available since the 1890s. At the time, there was a battle over the best way to power a car, or what business professors would call a battle for “dominant design.” The options were combustion engines, electric and – as unlikely as it sounds – steam. Yes, it has been that long since that battle was first fought.
Nearly 40% of vehicles on the road at the turn of the 20th century were electric. But after Henry Ford’s first Model T, which used an internal combustion engine, left the production line in 1908, they all but disappeared. Since then, electric cars have been trying to make a comeback. As the precocious person at the back of my class knows, they have been “the next big thing” for over 100 years.
What factors help explain why EVs lost the battle for design dominance back then – and why do they still seem to have a chance today?
The ‘cool factor’ − but so much more
Those who point to the Tesla Roadster as the first modern EV point to its reputation for being fun, sporty and cool. And they’re right: the Tesla Roadster has made electric vehicles cool – albeit expensive, priced at over $100,000 when it launched in 2008.
But there are many more factors that explain the rising demand and, more importantly, the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.
One reason for the increase in demand starting around 2010 is better and more widely available charging infrastructure. In the US, there were fewer than 500 public and private charging stations nationwide in 2009; Today there are more than a hundred times as many. That has helped alleviate consumers’ “range anxiety,” the nagging fear that you’ll run out of “juice” before you can get to a charging station.
But many other factors are also at play: the right range of models and options made available by manufacturers, improved battery and charging technology, and the right mix of government regulations and incentives. All have led to healthy consumer demand.
Technology Adoption: It Takes a Village – and Time
Beyond these technical and economic factors, current studies and my own ongoing research also suggest that the social conversation around EVs – what everyone in the world says and thinks about them – has also taken a positive turn.
Technology adoption is influenced by what is known as peer effects: the desire to compare oneself with others. That’s because people engage in “social comparison” by paying attention to what others like them do and, more importantly, how those other people might view their behavior. The same applies, for example, to the adoption of solar panels, another technology that, like electric vehicles, has both personal and social benefits.
As I noted earlier, the coolness factor has a positive impact on electric vehicle adoption. Driving a cool car matters because that coolness is visible. And if a car hasn’t been cool for so long, a fundamental – and positive – change in public perception can significantly impact demand and acceptance.
My research and other studies suggest that a turning point may have occurred in the mid-2010s, when both public attitudes and charging technology and infrastructure began to improve. It takes a village for a market to emerge.
The challenge of electric vehicle adoption reminds us that many of our technologies are not just tools or devices, but ways of getting things done. Technology comes from the Greek word ‘techne’, which means a practice, a set of habits and a way of achieving a goal.
Much of our technology, from early word processing software to today’s streaming services, depends on collective social behavior and the way it changes – or in many cases does not.
For example, the standard ‘QWERTY’ keyboard is not intuitive. But because it set the standard, it became the dominant design. It is now too efficient and socially embedded to allow for easy replacement.
New technologies shouldn’t look all that different from what we’re used to, otherwise they would make it too difficult for us to adopt them. That’s why EV charging plugs look like – you guessed it – gas pump nozzles.
In other words, cool technologies must be in line with existing behaviors and habits, otherwise they will have to go a long way to develop new ones. Without this coordination, new technology will remain on the shelf for a long time, but will never succeed – as electric cars almost did.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization providing facts and analysis to help you understand our complex world.
It was written by: Hovig Tchalian, University of Southern California.
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Hovig Tchalian does not work for, consult with, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.