If you’re a construction professional in the United States, there is a strong likelihood you drive an SUV or pickup truck as these vehicles outsell smaller vehicles here. They have also become physically larger, alarming safety advocates who note that this has resulted in more pedestrian deaths.

Environmentalists are also concerned because sales of the larger gas guzzlers keep growing; however, there is now a very good chance that your next vehicle will not guzzle gas or diesel fuel at all. Electric vehicles (EVs) are finally making serious inroads, including electric pickup trucks.

In October and November, I traveled on the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego and back in a rented 2023 Tesla Model Y. My companion and I drove about 3,300 miles during a three-week span, visiting some friends and staying in Airbnbs along the way. 

A considerable amount of misinformation appears online about electric vehicles these days. Because I’m preparing to switch to fully electric from my old hybrid, I wanted to know first-hand what it would be like to do a long trip. We had planned to map out all our charging stops in advance while also planning our Airbnbs, but we ran out of time when I became ill from the side effects of a COVID-19 booster. As it turned out, it didn’t matter; pre-planning was unnecessary. 

You enter your destination for the day, usually an Airbnb address in our case, and Tesla’s artificial intelligence (AI) does the rest for you, directing you to the ideal charging station along the way. In every case, the charging station was located near a shopping mall or at least one decent restaurant. Each time we stopped, it took less than 40 minutes to recharge to 311 miles of range. In most cases, it was fully charged before we were done eating, checking email, shopping, etc.

As you drive along, the screen shows how many miles of charge are still in the battery and what percent there will still be by the time you reach a charging station. Sometimes, the AI would cut it close; for example, scheduling us to arrive with less than 10% of our charge remaining. This made me a little nervous (my companion more so), but it was never wrong and we never had a problem.

When I returned home to my battery-gas hybrid, I assumed I would no longer experience this much-discussed “range anxiety” that comes with modern electrics. However, now I was conscious of it. I realized two things: One, for decades, I have kept a small, empty plastic gas can in my trunk in case I ever run out of gas. Two, when driving on a long trip in my gas car, if I’m in the country and heading out of town on a quiet highway where there might not be many gas stations, I routinely check my gas gauge to make sure I have plenty. 

So, long before electric vehicles, I have been suffering from range anxiety.

Soaring Electric Vehicle Sales 

A record 1.2 million EVs were sold in the United States in 2023, according to estimates from Kelley Blue Book. And ev-volumes.com says 14.1 million were sold worldwide, led by strong market growth in China, the United States and Germany. It represents an expansion in the sector of 34% compared with 2022.

U.S. electric vehicle market share grew by 28%, and ev-volumes.com predicts global annual sales of 40 million electric vehicles by 2030 and slightly under 80 million by 2035. Market share will grow from 20% next year to about 68% in 2035. 

It’s not surprising that seven out of 10 new vehicles will be electric by then; the prediction is likely conservative because the cultural shift will be strongly internalized in the public mind, and fossil-fuel vehicle bans will be enacted in most cities and many other places. BMW recently indicated that the tipping point for EVs had been reached and peak combustion vehicle production likely occurred in 2023.

Tesla, the world market leader in electric vehicles, has finally begun delivering its highly anticipated Cybertruck to customers. The Ford F-150 Lightning (electric pickup) and Rivian pickup trucks are selling briskly across North America.

According to insideevs.com, Ford’s battery-electric vehicles improved on all metrics, leading to a record December, record quarter and the best full-year result ever. The company sold more than 72,000 all-electric vehicles (F-150 Lightning, E-Transit trade van and Mustang Mach-E), which makes it the No. 2 brand in the segment after Tesla. 

Lightning sales increased by 61% to 3,800 units; E-Transit sales more than doubled to 1,485; and the Mach-E grew by 2% year-over-year to 4,863. In December 2023, Ford sold 10,148 all-electric vehicles, which is 30% more than the previous year. 

Startup Rivian launched a pickup, an SUV and the Amazon delivery van simultaneously in late 2021/early 2022 and managed to stabilize production, achieving a strong growth rate and a solid year of sales in 2023. It delivered 13,972 units, up 73% from 2022. During the fourth quarter of 2023, Rivian produced 17,541 electric vehicles, 75% more than the previous year and a new record (its third in a row).

Media reports say Tesla has more than 4 million reservations on its books for the Cybertruck and Ford has 200,000-plus for the Lightning. However, these are based on deposits of a few hundred dollars or less; translating them into actual sales is another matter. Nevertheless, there does not seem to be a lack of demand for electric pickups in the United States. Several new ones have appeared, including a new Chevy Silverado electric. Others are expected to follow.

Will Electric Vehicles Crush the Power Grid?

This is a common misconception; the readers of this column, many of whom are engineers, understand it could easily be rhetoric based on fear or misinformation. EVs are about five times as efficient as gasoline vehicles, as shown in Table 1. The number of vehicles drawing energy from the electricity grid is about to increase significantly, but each vehicle will use only one-fifth as much energy.

Record additions of low-cost renewable power and dramatic declines of inefficient coal and gas to make electricity will also contribute to the continuation of a relatively stable worldwide electricity grid. 

Personal transportation sales are declining as these ramp up because younger generations prefer to rent vehicles as needed rather than own them. Sales peaked at about 91 million in 2019, crashed to about 79 million during the pandemic, recovered to about 82 million by 2022 and may hit 87 million for 2023. However, surveys among younger generations imply less purchasing in the future. 

Some believe car sharing will continue to grow. According to the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, ride-hailing (e.g., Uber and Lyft) increased from more than 5 billion trips in 2016 to more than 16 billion in 2019 before dropping dramatically during the pandemic. 

However, reduced ownership or vehicle sharing may not reduce vehicle use. Uber says it lost more than half its trips by mid-2020 but had recovered by mid-2022; in early 2023, it was about 11% ahead of 2019. McKinsey & Co. reports that between 2016 and 2023, global car-share rentals have doubled from about 35 million to around 70 million.

Still, it may be that more use of temporary vehicle rentals and ride-hailing could lead to more rational choices and fewer vehicles overall, especially if cities continue to invest in public transit. 

The Untold Story of EV/Power Grid Efficiencies

As experts analyze the integration of higher numbers of electric vehicles into our grid, they find that some new technological characteristics are introducing much more significant potential energy efficiencies and grid reliability safeguards.

Dr. Nancy E. Ryan of eMobility Advisors is an economist who served as commissioner for the California Public Utilities Commission and was a partner at Energy and Environmental Economics in San Francisco. She taught economics at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. With more than 30 years of experience in the electricity industry, Ryan is currently focused on transportation electrification and renewable energy.

She notes that in the 21st century, transportation electrification will drive electric utilities’ load growth — as the rapid adoption of air conditioning did in the mid-20th century. She further notes that EV charging is a highly flexible load and has the potential to help balance intermittent wind and solar generation, lowering the cost of decarbonizing electricity generation. 

Why? Because EV owners can exercise discretion about which hours of the day or night they “plug-in” to recharge. Utilities can use groups of EV owners as large power assets to help them avoid using or building expensive gas-powered peaker plants.

Ryan has provided a chapter for my new book, “Proven Climate Solutions,” which will be released in a few months. She writes: “Electrifying light-duty vehicles can save money for drivers and utility customers while reducing overall emissions … Numerous benefit-cost studies have found that switching from a gasoline-powered vehicle to an EV reduces drivers’ total cost of ownership … Over an EV’s lifetime, savings from avoided gasoline purchases and lower maintenance costs more than offset higher electricity bills and its upfront price premium.” 

On the utility front, she says spreading the fixed costs of electricity generation and distribution infrastructure over increased electricity sales yields surplus revenue that can be used to lower rates or invest in the grid. The geopolitics work for America as well: “Substituting domestically produced electricity for imported petroleum-based fuels reduces our exposure to volatile global oil markets, brings energy jobs home to the U.S. and stimulates local economies.”

Regarding the environment, Ryan notes: “The carbon emitted from burning a gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel cannot be reduced. In contrast, policy and market forces are steadily reducing the carbon intensity of our electricity supply.”

Two Technologies, Two Policies

Integrating large numbers of electric vehicles with our power grid is made easier with the help of two emergent technologies and two policy ideas. 

• Bidirectional charging. One of the technologies Ryan writes about is bidirectional charging, which is built into the Ford F-150 Lightning electric, Rivian pickup trucks, Tesla Cybertruck, electric school buses, VW ID4 passenger cars and others. This means these vehicles can discharge their battery directly to the grid, a building, equipment or power tools.

She describes bidirectional EVs as “essentially mobile storage devices” that can act like a stationary battery. An additional advantage is they can travel to sites where electricity is most needed. 

“In an outage or other emergency, a bidirectional EV could power a home, an emergency shelter, a hospital or another critical facility for several hours, reducing the need for noisy, polluting and expensive diesel generators,” Ryan explains. “Similarly, they can provide clean, quiet power at campgrounds, parks and jobsites.”

Ryan says safety is a paramount consideration whenever a distributed energy resource injects energy into the grid or powers a building or equipment. Safe processes and technical standards are needed to protect utility personnel, customers and the public. “Fortunately, it is not necessary to start from square one: V2X systems can usually fit within existing interconnection processes … for back-up generators (or) stationary energy storage systems,” she adds.

• Telematics. An early form of AI is the telematics system found on many commercial vehicles, including modern electric vehicles.

Electric vehicles are often equipped with a host of sensors and microprocessors, Wi-Fi and GPS trackers. In addition to helping manage logistics, telematics enables managed charging, using vehicle data to optimize and schedule the timing of charging, and monitoring the rate of charge (kW) and total energy dispensed (kWh) in a charging session. 

“By factoring state-of-charge into the optimization algorithm, telematics-based managed charging systems can determine how long it will take to replenish the battery and, therefore, how much latitude there is to turn charging off and on in order to shift load and provide grid services,” Ryan notes. 

She says utilities across the United States are working with managed charging programs using telematics: “In California, BMW and PG&E’s ChargeForward pilot demonstrated using telematics to schedule participating vehicles charging sessions to support grid reliability and prioritize charging with renewable energy.”

Drivers could specify their charging preferences (e.g., least cost, lowest emissions, etc.), planned departure time in a smartphone app, and the system’s scheduled charging. Telematics data can also be used to measure an EV’s electricity use, eliminating the need for a costly second utility meter. 

Several utilities, including National Grid, ConEd and DTE, use telematics-based systems to implement incentive programs, encouraging drivers to charge outside of peak hours and to verify eligibility for incentive payments. 

• Policies. Targeted EV power rates and driver-centered managed charging programs are two keys to realizing the potential economic and environmental benefits of EV charging, says Ryan. “Utilities have piloted a variety of optional EV electricity rates, including day ahead, locational real-time pricing, peak-time rebates and event-based demand response programs.” 

She writes that pilot programs have consistently shown EV drivers responding to time-of-use rates, with reduced cents/kWh charges during off-peak hours. Easy to understand and follow, they introduce drivers to the concept of saving money by shifting charging, and the technologies in the foregoing make them easy to use.

I keep reading articles about all the reasons electric vehicles, including work vehicles, are problematic; however, it appears that the reality is different. The public in most countries welcomes electric cars and trucks in huge numbers; the imagined problems are not a factor, and there are some impressive benefits, as so often happens with long-sought technology. Motor on!