Joe Pulliam On The Popularity Growth Of Electric Cars

(Newswire.net — June 6, 2016) Fort Smith, Arkansas — Joe Pulliam has explained why sales of plug-in electric vehicles continue to go up. Joe is the general manager at Crain Hyundai of Fort Smith. According to Joe, the main reason for the rise in sales of electric cars is the continuous decline in battery cost.

A report by the U.S. Department of Energy shows that the consistent drop in the cost of electric car battery directly correlates to the rise of plug-in vehicle sales. In 2009, they estimated lithium-ion batteries to cost around $1000 per kilowatt-hour. During this time, sales of electric vehicles were non-existent. However, there were also very few models on the market, which could be why the market did not experience any sales.

Joe has stated that companies began first efforts to mass-produce and market plug-in cars by 2011 after the cost of batteries dropped to $600 per kW-hr. It has continued to drop since then, and has dropped at a much faster rate in the last few years. The market in fact experienced a 71% drop in battery costs from 2009 to 2014, and during these years plug-in electric vehicle sales rose to nearly 300,000.

From 2009 to 2010, plug-in vehicles did not sell at all, and this is mainly attributed to the high price of batteries, which went from $1000 in 2010 to $753 in 2009. When battery cost dropped to $580 and $444 in 2011 and 2012 respectively, the industry saw a significant rise in sales, with numbers going from 17,500 in 2011 to 50,000 in 2012. In 2013, batteries were priced at $324, and an astounding number of 170,000 plug-in vehicles were sold. Sales then continued to rise up, until it reached 290,000 in 2014 with batteries priced at $289.

In more recent times, Tesla has reported each battery pack to cost as low as $260 per kW-hr, with some reports saying that it now costs $200 per kW-hr. Tesla is confident that the price will decrease even more in the near future.

Now that battery companies have been significantly increasing production and making plans to construct more Gigafactories, and with automakers worldwide investing money into adding more battery manufacturing sites, the cost of batteries is expected to drop tremendously in the coming years. As a result, sales of plug-in electric vehicles will continue to grow in the United States as well as all over the world. For more about the featured general manager, visit here.