It will take a mighty big change of fortune for the electric vehicle EV industry to meet Illinois’ goal of one million EVs on the road in Illinois by 2030. Gov. JB Pritzker repeated that target last week, but trends are pointing somewhere else. The hard numbers are EV registrations in Illinois, published by the Illinois Secretary of State. For the most recent 12-month period, Illinois added just 32,478 vehicles to its EV registration rolls. That’s 8,120 per quarter.
Automakers from Ford, General Motor, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans. Even U.S. EV leader Tesla, which is estimated to have accounted for 55% of EV sales in the country in 2023, is bracing for what “may be a notably lower” rate of growth, CEO Elon Musk said in late January.