At the beginning of this decade, plug-in electric car sales were almost zero and it is amazing that the global count is now slightly above two million units. To be more specific, the figure through the end of last year was approximately 2,032,000 passenger cars, including light-duty plug-in electric vehicle vans. Excluded from this figure is heavy duty plug-ins, as well as other light-duty electric cars or commercial plug-ins. The numbers would definitely fluff up slightly if the mentioned cars are included. Nevertheless, there has been a measurable progress for the types of cars driven by consumers.

Petroleum has been dominating for more than a century, with up to 1.4 billion gas motor cars being driven on global roads. This means that two million plug-in electric cars would make up only 0.15% of the total cars in the world. However, this percentage has increased from 1.10% in the year 2015. Therefore, while plug-in electric cars are still few, advocates of green cars might still consider the glass to be half full. Basically, this is just the beginning with 2016 being the year that major car manufacturers committed to producing plug-in electric cars. These manufacturers promised that in the next 8 years, 15-25% of their total sales will be accounted for by plug-in electric vehicles. Other automakers have also set the goals of advancing this market.

The half-full glass scenario is justifiable since the plug-in electric vehicle market was not there until six years ago. The current decade is when the mainstream car manufacturers started to shift from conventional powered vehicles to computer-powered plug-in electric and hybrid cars that use electric motors and lithium-ion batteries. About 1,720 plug-in passenger car sales were recorded across the globe. The figure then increased to 6,560 in 2010. After that 118, 690 plug-ins were sold in 2012, 192,010 in 2013 and in 2014, 325,090 cars were sold. In 2015, 550,570 units were sold while in 2016, 775,000 plug-in electric car units were sold globally. China, the United States, and Europe are the top markets. China and Europe’s plug-in electric vehicle market share is about 1% with the United States’ share being about 0.9%. For the initial years of this decade, the United States was leading in plug-in electric vehicle sales. In November and December of 2016, the U.S. PEV market share went above 1% with December’s share being the highest at 1.39%. More than 250,000 units in the U.S are in the state of California. California alone surpassed the whole of China in the year 2014 in terms of PEV sales.