More than 7% of cars sold in the United States in 2023 were electric vehicles. In some parts of the world, such as Norway, this rate has reached a whopping 20 percent. In California, where I live, almost 60% of people looking for a car in 2021 said they would at least consider buying an electric vehicle.
This increase in demand comes after years of declining sales. As recently as 2010, fewer than 100,000 cars on U.S. roads were electric vehicles. This number exceeded the 1 million mark in 2018, an increase of more than 80% compared to the previous year.
What explains this seemingly unexpected increase over the past few years?
The key word here is “apparently”. The answer reveals an interesting history that most people are completely unaware of.
I teach entrepreneurship at the USC Marshall School of Business and have been studying the EV market for over a decade. Students were asked “How long have EVs been commercially available?” When I ask, most will answer five years, 10, maybe 20 years. One can point to an EV that General Motors introduced in the 1990s and whose name one cannot remember.
But occasionally, a precocious person (usually seated in the back row) will raise their hand and respond, “Since the early 1900s.”
This is almost the correct answer.
Electric vehicles and the long road to adoption
EVs are a new and old technology. Most people don’t know that they have been commercially available since the 1890s. At the time, there was a fight over how best to power a car, or what business professors would call the “dominant design” war. The options were internal combustion engines, electric and – although unlikely – steam. Yes, that much time has passed since the first day of that war.
In the early 1900s, almost 40% of vehicles on the road were electric. But they all disappeared after Henry Ford’s first Model T to use an internal combustion engine rolled off the production line in 1908. EVs have been trying to make a comeback ever since. As the precocious person sitting in the back of my classroom knows, they have been the “next big thing” for over 100 years.
So what factors help explain why EVs lost the dominant design battle back then, and why they seem to have a fighting chance today?
‘Cool factor’ – but so much more
Those who point to the Tesla Roadster as the first modern electric vehicle point to its reputation as fun, sporty and cool. And they’re right: The Tesla Roadster made EVs cool, though it was expensive at its launch in 2008, costing over $100,000.
But there are many more factors that explain the increase in demand and, more importantly, the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.
One reason for the increase in demand since 2010 is better and more widely available charging infrastructure. In 2009, there were fewer than 500 public and private charging stations nationwide in the United States; today there are more than 100 times as many. This has helped alleviate consumers’ “range anxiety,” that nagging fear that they’ll run out of “juice” before they can get to the charging station.
But many other factors are also at play: the right models and options offered 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
Aside from these technical and economic factors, current research and my own ongoing research show that the social conversation around electric vehicles (what everyone in the world is saying and thinking about them) is also getting better.
Technology adoption is influenced by the desire to compare oneself with others, known as “peer effects.” This is because people engage in “social comparison,” paying attention to what others like them are doing and, more importantly, how other people evaluate their behavior. The same goes for the adoption of solar panels, another technology that has both personal and societal benefits, such as electric vehicles.
As I mentioned earlier, the cool factor has a positive impact on electric vehicle adoption. Driving a cool car is important because that coolness is visible. And when a car hasn’t been cool for that long, a fundamental, positive change in public perception can significantly impact demand and adoption.
My research and other studies suggest that a turning point may have come in the mid-to-late 2010s, when both public attitudes and charging technology and infrastructure began to improve. It takes a village to establish a market.
The challenge of EV adoption is a reminder that many of our technologies are not just tools or devices, they are ways of getting things done. Technology comes from the Greek word “techne,” meaning a practice, a set of habits, and a means of achieving a goal.
From early word processing software to today’s streaming services, much of our technology depends on collective social behaviors and how they change, or in many cases, do not change.
For example, the standard “qwerty” keyboard is not intuitive. But it became the dominant design because it set the standard. It is now too efficient and socially integrated to be easily changed.
New technologies may not seem very different from the technologies we are used to or make it very difficult for us to adopt them. That’s why EV charging plugs look like, you guessed it, gas pump nozzles.
In other words, great technologies need to be compatible with existing behaviors and traditions, otherwise they will have to go a long way to create new ones. Without this alignment, new technology will sit on the shelf for a long time but will never achieve the success that EVs almost did.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent, nonprofit news organization providing facts and analysis to help you understand our complex world.
Written by: Hovig Tchalian, University of Southern California.
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Hovig Tchalian does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic duties.