The Electric Vehicle Future Is Coming. Just a Little More Slowly.

Electric vehicles were the future. The automakers poured billions (yes, with a ‘B’) of dollars into developing new batteries, powertrains and vehicle architectures. They publicly stated that gasoline powered engines would no longer be available by the early 2030s.

Until all that changed. 

To be clear, pure battery electric vehicles are the future… Just not quite as quickly as initially thought. Rather than jumping straight from the internal combustion engine, most automakers are now taking an intermediate step by offering a hybrid vehicle - one that runs on both battery power or gasoline. It's a natural step to get people used to battery powered driving, yet still offers the convenience of gasoline for longer trips and to help reduce the fears of ‘range anxiety’ which happens with the more limited driving range of an EV. 

So why did the automakers have a change of heart? Several reasons. First, sales aren’t growing as fast as they were last year. In 2023, EV sales increased by over 50 percent from the year before. In the first half of this year, according to government data, they are up only about 10 percent.

That’s partly because gasoline-powered cars are still cheaper than EVs and many of the more affluent consumers and first adopters wanting to go electric have already made their purchases.

Then there is government regulation. Early last year, the Biden administration proposed a rule with strong emissions restrictions on new passenger cars that would push the industry to gradually increase the share of electric vehicles in their fleets until an estimated two-thirds of new passenger cars it sold were gasoline-free by 2032.

But when the rule was finalized earlier this year, the speed of the pollution-reduction goals was relaxed. That means that even though companies still have to reduce the pollution of their fleets to the same levels by 2032, they don’t have to rush.

Even so, despite the automakers switching to hybrid vehicles in the short term and pulling back R&D spending on EVs, they will be the future. They have put too much time and money into the programs, switched factories and trained workers how to build and service them, and ultimately the industry regulations will require them to meet emission targets.

And while nobody can quite predict exactly when the tipping point will be, two things have to happen; the first is that the price of EVs needs to be the same, or cheaper than gasoline vehicles. And the second is that the charging infrastructure needs to be much more robust that it is today. 

Fortunately, Intertek is helping customers working on electric vehicles and their charging systems. From testing batteries to charger safety, our experts are helping to develop the cars of the future. For more information, visit https://www.intertek.com/automotive/electric-vehicle-testing/.