New Energy Weekly – Road Trip

Electric Vehicles are on the Move

Jennifer Granholm, the Secretary of Energy, took a group of electric vehicles on a four-day road trip from Charlotte, North Carolina to Memphis Tennessee. 

If you read our Grove newsletter, then you know why EV road trips are challenging. And travelling in groups of EVs is a bad idea.  To put it simply, there aren’t enough chargers. 

And in an unfortunate turn of events, one of her staffers blocked a charger with a gasoline vehicle to “reserve” it for the government vehicles. That devolved into an argument that ended with a call to the police. Not great for a PR effort.

It does make an important point – there aren’t enough chargers. And Americans are buying a lot of EVs. According to data from Bloomberg, EV’s share of new car sales topped 7% for the first half of 2023. All times sales reached 3 million cars. 

But one number jumped off the page: In the twelve months through June, Americans bought nearly a million EVs. Here’s the context. It took a decade to sell the first million EVs, 2 years to reach the second million and just over a year to reach the third million.

And the high gasoline prices are helping drive that trend.
Today, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil is over $90 per barrel. That’s the highest price we’ve seen since November 2022.

It’s starting to pinch us at the gas pump again. People remember the brutal cost of fuel in 2022…and they are buying electric cars.  

This is one branch of THE trend we see dominating the markets for the next decade or more. The great diversification of energy and particularly the embrace of electricity will create billions of dollars of opportunities for investors. 

And right now, EVs are leading the way.

Good Investing,

Matt Badiali