Think of a city you know, and try to picture it five years from now. Will its streets be full of electric cars, some of them self-driving? If so, then the current travails of electric vehicles (EVs) will have been a mere speed bump. US sales have slowed well below the government’s target, EVs’ share of the British market has stopped growing and only 1.2 per cent of European passenger cars in 2022 were battery-powered.
We know that some vehicle is going to replace the combustion-engine car. The EU, UK, California and several other US states will ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035, with the phasing out starting much earlier. So what will most drivers shift to? Will they take up electric cars — in effect, just a cleaner version of what they already had — or switch modes of transport altogether? My bet is that, in cities at least, the e-car won’t be the vehicle of the future. I suspect it will keep falling further behind e-bikes, e-mopeds and e-scooters.
