There Are 300 Million Electric Bikes and only 10 Million Electric Cars
Because we are building the wrong kind of electric car
Nearly every electric vehicle in the world is an electric bike. There are 300 million electric two-wheelers on the road vs. just 10 million electric freeway cars and trucks. The number of electric bikes and other light electric vehicles is growing so fast — by tens of millions of units each year — that the number of electric freeway cars (what people usually mean when they say “electric vehicle”) will never surpass the number of electric two-wheelers.
That’s a problem. To address climate change and a host of other problems, we need more electric four-wheelers. But by focusing on four-wheelers that reach speeds of 100 MPH and ranges in the hundreds of miles, we are making them too heavy, too expensive, and we just aren’t making enough.
Only 3 million electric cars and SUVs were sold in 2020, globally, so just getting to 300 million electric vehicles would take 100 years at current sales. However, powered by incredible new technologies and powerful incentives, optimistic scenarios show that we could have 300 million electric cars and trucks by the mid-2030s. There are serious questions about production, recycling, battery materials, affordability, places to plug them in, and whether the electricity grid can support them, but there is in fact a chance that electricity will power 15% of the ~2 billion cars and light trucks expected to be on the road in 2035.
300 million electric cars and SUVs will allow many Americans, Europeans, and urban Chinese to live more electrified versions of their current lifestyles. But if 1.7 billion combustion-fueled cars and light trucks remain in service in 2035, we will have locked in catastrophic climate change, so there won’t be a solution for those 300 million electric car owners to proudly be a part of.
Meanwhile, by 2035, 800 million electric two-wheelers and other light EVs will be on the road. There are next to no questions about how all of those vehicles will be produced, charged, or how affordable they will be. They will make life easier for people all over the world, replacing car and bus trips in many cities, and replacing nearly all combustion motorcycles and motor scooters.
But in this scenario, there will still be billions of people, mostly in South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but also in the US, Europe, and China, for whom an electric motorbike or three-wheeler won’t do the job or won’t be available and an electric freeway car won’t be affordable. So they will buy new or used combustion vehicles. Hence the 1.7 billion combustion four-wheelers expected to still be on the road in 15 years.
If electric cars as we think of them today (2000+ pounds, capable of freeway speeds and freeway range) can’t be produced fast enough and affordably enough to meet the the world’s climate goals, and electric two-wheelers are too small to meet many people’s practical needs or aspirations, we need another option in order to beat climate change and keep people moving. We need something that offers most of the utility of a four-wheel car, with the affordability, maneuverability, and rapid manufacturability of a electric motorbike.
Let’s call them City Cars.
Fortunately, electric City Cars already exist, and more of them are being created every year. Here are some of my favorites:
- The Wuling Huong Gang is a ~$5000 electric four-seater car that can hit 60 MPH and has a purported range of 80 miles. It is by far the best selling model of electric car in China, at ~30,000 units/month.
- The Citroen Ami is a 1000 pound two-seater electric car (technically a quadricycle) with a top speed of 28 MPH and a range of 40 miles. It is available in France for ~$6000 and is coming to the US as a rental vehicle.
- Nimbus, a Michigan-based startup with a brilliant mechanical engineer founder, is making a motorcycle-size, fully-enclosed, electric three-wheeler that it plans to retail for less than $7,000 as soon as next year.
- Back in China, a huge industry of essentially generic Low Speed EVs has put perhaps 6 million vehicles on the road at prices sometimes less than $2000. Operating in a legal gray area, much like China’s hundreds of millions of e-bikes did for years, they are popular with the elderly and others who can’t yet afford a full-size EV.
That electric freeway cars aren’t the answer to climate change won’t sink in for a few years. They dominate the imagination of older corporate and government leaders and consumers in the US, EU, and China, who can’t picture themselves, their customers, or their constituents in anything other than an American-style freeway vehicle. As a society, we will spend billions and billions to make that a reality even after it becomes embarrassingly obvious how niche (and riche) it is.
But if we factor-in the 6+ million electric City Cars currently on the road, our total for electric cars goes from 10 million to perhaps 17 million — a big improvement. The real improvement is in how many more of those smaller, lighter, more affordable EVs could be built in the next decade, especially if they benefited from some of the billions in subsidies currently being pumped into electric freeway vehicles. If freeway EVs, with current production of 3 million per year and starting prices in the tens of thousands of dollars, could sell three hundred million in the next decade or so, imagine how many electric City Cars, with prices in the single digit thousands, could be sold.
A billion? I hope so.
