What’s Going On Here?A report out on Wednesday suggested that EV adoption isn’t moving fast enough to reach net-zero road emissions by 2050. What Does This Mean?Environmental success stories are few and far between, but EVs are definitely one of them: the clean machines already on the world’s roads are saving a collective 1.5 million barrels of oil a day – a figure that’s projected to hit 2.5 million by 2025 (tweet this). In fact, sales of EVs are on track to more than triple to 21 million by 2025, compared to the 14 million forecast just a year ago. So sleep easy: this climate change thing is all sorted.
Um, not according to analysts at BloombergNEF, who think more needs to be done to reach carbon-neutral road emissions. It turns out that replacing the 1.2 billion gas-fueled vehicles on the world’s roads is a big ask, even if sales of new ones have peaked. As for how to speed things up, BloombergNEF’s analysts are recommending a hard-stop on sales of new gas-guzzlers by 2035, more emphasis on public transport, and extra investment in charging stations. Why Should I Care?The bigger picture: This is an “us” problem.
The report also flagged the growing gap in EV adoption, with the proportion of EV sales in wealthy economies expected to hit 85% by 2040 compared to emerging economies’ 54%. That’s not okay if we want any chance of reaching net-zero, and some analysts think richer governments will need to offer financial support to narrow the gap.
Zooming out: Great Scott!
Even DeLorean announced plans this week to launch its own EV in 2024, though it admitted that the so-called Alpha5 won’t even be street legal at first. Presumably they only need it to get to 88 miles per hour in a mall car park so they can go back to 1981 – the year before its founder was charged with conspiring to smuggle drugs and DeLorean went bankrupt. | 
