Monthly EV sales average must accelerate to hit 2030 goal

Hitting the next ambitious goal to make North Carolinians convert from combustion engine vehicles to zero-emission will require a monthly average better than the yearly norm of the past five years.

Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday touted the state hitting a goal from a 2018 executive order in which he aimed for 80,000 zero-emission vehicles registered in the state by 2025. In a release, he said the latest numbers available through November showed that mark has been hit two years early.

His executive order in January 2022, however, put a goal of 1.25 million registered by 2030. With 81 months to go and 1.17 million needed, the state will need to average adding more than 14,400 per month.

In the most recent five years, from November 2018 to this past, the annual average is about 13,000.

“We knew the private markets were shifting to electric vehicles so we set bold goals that would help North Carolina communities be ready,” Cooper said in a release. “Now it’s happening even faster than we anticipated. The key is making EVs more affordable with the assurance that charging stations are available most places, and that’s why we are modernizing state policies and working to build out charging infrastructure in every community all across North Carolina.”

Not all facts agree with the second-term Democrat whose plans run congruent to President Joe Biden.

Car dealers say they have more than can be sold because Americans are not buying them. Five thousand dealers signed the second of two letters asking Biden to “slam the brakes.”

Ford Motor Co. paused a $3.5 billion plant it was building in Michigan, and indefinitely postponed a $12 billion investment in electric vehicles. General Motors and Honda canceled respective programs to sell electric vehicles for about $30,000. All have been handsomely courted with taxpayer subsidies.

Jon Sanders, director of the conservative-leaning John Locke Foundation’s Center for Food, Power and Life, told The Center Square last week, “You have to start from the perspective that this is not something the market wants, so we have to use the force of government to make it happen.”

Electric vehicles in the state are unlikely to dodge rate hikes from the North Carolina Utilities Commission, but they do avoid the 40.5 cents per gallon tax on unleaded gasoline. That’s the fifth highest fuel tax rate in the country, yet it helps maintain roads and builds modal projects.

And it allows for passenger vehicles and trucks up to 4,000 pounds to register annually at $38.75. On Jan. 1, the electric vehicle registration rate jumped 28.3%, from $140.25 to $180.

An average driver going 12,000 miles during the year in a vehicle getting 22 miles per gallon, that consumer would pay about $220 – or $4.25 a week.

In a state with the ninth-largest population of 10.8 million, roughly 8 million vehicle registrations remain combustion engines, either gas or diesel.

North Carolina has led the nation in clean energy private-sector investments since the passage of the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act, according to a report from E2 at the recent Cleantech Summit in Chapel Hill.

Toyota is investing $13.9 billion in a Randolph County plant 20 miles from downtown Greensboro. State incentives are up to $315 million over 39 years, and $185 million in site development funds.

Epsilon ($650 million investment in a synthetic graphite production plant) and Kempower ($41 million investment) are among other companies in the industry with project announcements that came in 2023.

The dubious award-winning bell ringer remains from spring 2022, when Vietnamese electric vehicle manufacturer VinFast and Cooper announced the company’s first phase $2 billion investment in a Chatham County plant. Based on a $4 billion investment, the company would get taxpayer subsidies of $316.1 million over 32 years.

VinFast’s losses eclipse $5 billion since 2021 and reviews for its first product designed for the U.S., the VF8 City Edition, were atrocious. It's a $50,000-plus electric vehicle.