Forecast: More than half of U.S. car sales will be EVs by 2030

Just over half of passenger cars sold in the U.S. will be electrified vehicles by 2030, according to a report from BloombergNEF, thanks in part to consumer incentives included in the $374 billion in new climate spending enacted by President Joe Biden.

Those incentives, among them a point-of-sale tax credit of up to $7,500 for a new EV purchase, are likely to boost the pace of adoption, BloombergNEF analysts found in the report. Prior to passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August, projections for EV sales by 2030 2030 came in at 43 percent of the U.S. market. With the climate-spending measure in place, that estimate was revised upwards to 52 percent.

The latest projection from BloombergNEF, the consulting and analysis affiliate of Bloomberg News, puts the U.S. on track to hit a key target set by Biden last year, for half of all cars sold in the U.S. to be battery-electric, plug-in hybrid or fuel cell-powered by the end of the decade.

In 2021, EVs accounted for less than 5 percent of sales in the U.S., below the global rate of nearly 9 percent and well below the adoption rate in countries like China, where plug-ins currently account for roughly 24 percent of new car sales. Norway became the first country to see electric overtake combustion engine vehicle sales last year. Under the revised forecast from BloombergNEF, the U.S. will surpass the global average in 2026 instead of 2028.