The trend toward green mobility will make electric cars a popular transport

The argument

This argument holds that the shift to electric transport is already underway and is being driven from two directions at once — by the market and by governments — which is what makes it a trend rather than a forecast. The market side is straightforward: sales and production of electric vehicles have been increasing. The government side is where the argument places its weight, because public commitments change what manufacturers and buyers can expect. Many governments now treat electric vehicles as the future of their transport systems and have shown themselves willing to invest in that future. Most countries in western Europe, along with India, Japan, Korea and some US states, have set targets ranging from selling only electric cars by 2030 to simply increasing electric car sales. The significance of those pledges lies in what they commit the countries to next. A target of that kind cannot be met by announcement alone. To reach it, governments will have to invest in charging infrastructure, and some will have to find ways of encouraging consumers to buy electric vehicles — which is why many countries already provide incentives for purchasing and manufacturing them. Each of those steps makes the following step easier: charging networks remove the practical objection to ownership, and purchase and manufacturing incentives encourage consumers to buy and firms to build. The result is a set of mutually reinforcing commitments rather than a single reversible decision. Governments that have set dates and attached incentives to them have committed themselves publicly to a direction of travel. With governments investing in electric vehicles and altering their policies to support them, and with sales and production rising, the argument concludes that it is only a matter of time before electric vehicles on the road outnumber traditional ones. The trend toward green mobility is what will make them the popular form of transport.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Though the price of electric vehicles has decreased, it is still greater than what many people can afford. Furthermore, though electric vehicle sales have increased, they still do not make up a large part of global car sales. In the United States, electric vehicles were around two percent of all new car sales in 2018, suggesting there is not a major push by the market for electric cars.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Rising sales from a small base measure growth rather than displacement, and the premise does not say what share of the fleet is involved. Governments treating a technology as the future is a statement of policy preference, not evidence about outcomes. [Rejecting P2] Targets are pledges by governments that do not bind their successors, and several of the dates cited have since been moved: phase-out deadlines have been delayed or softened in more than one of the countries the argument names, generally under pressure from cost, charging infrastructure and industry lobbying. Purchase incentives have similarly been reduced or withdrawn once budgets tightened. [Rejecting P3] The market and government are not pushing in the same direction as cleanly as the premise assumes. The counter-argument on record notes the price gap, and the constraints the argument does not address — charging availability for households without off-street parking, and the supply of lithium, nickel and cobalt — bear on how far and how fast the transition runs. [Rejecting C] 'Only a matter of time' also makes the claim unfalsifiable, since any pace of adoption confirms it. The rival positions concern whether electrification reaches the scale claimed and whether other technologies take a share, neither of which a statement about eventuality addresses.