Skip to content
Green
Electric Vehicles

US Crosses the Electric-Car Tipping Point for Mass Adoption

Once 5% of new-car sales go fully electric, everything changes — according to a Bloomberg analysis of the 19 countries that have made the EV pivot.

An electric vehicle for sale at a car dealership in Colma, California, US. 

An electric vehicle for sale at a car dealership in Colma, California, US. 

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

By

From

Many people of a certain age can recall the first time they held a smartphone. The devices were weird and expensive and novel enough to draw a crowd at parties. Then, less than a decade later, it became unusual not to own one.

That same society-altering shift is happening now with electric vehicles, according to a Bloomberg analysis of adoption rates around the world. The US is the latest country to pass what’s become a critical EV tipping point: 5% of new car sales powered only by electricity. This threshold signals the start of mass EV adoption, the period when technological preferences rapidly flip, according to the analysis.