When Will All Cars Be Electric?

This post, part of a series we're running all about electric cars, was written by William R. Harris from HowStuffWorks.com.

In the last five years, electric cars have gone from being a big joke to being the next big thing. According to the Electric Drive Transportation Association's Electric Drive Fact Sheet, nearly 1.5 million hybrid cars -- part gasoline, part electric vehicles such as the Toyota Prius -- have been sold in the United States since 1999. At the same time, sales of neighborhood electric vehicles, which have a limited range, have increased dramatically among police forces, military posts, and colleges and universities. Now, a full lineup of extended-range vehicles will soon be available from a number of manufacturers, putting the electric car within reach of the average consumer.

What happens next is anybody's guess. President Obama hopes to see 1 million electric vehicles, or EVs, on the road by 2015. But when you consider there are approximately 250 million motor-vehicle registrations in the U.S. as of 2008, 1 million EVs is just a drop in the bucket. Will we ever see a time when all cars will have batteries instead of internal combustion engines?

Some people think so. Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, expects all cars to be electric by 2030. Then again, that could be wishful thinking from someone with a vested interest in seeing EVs succeed. Buffett's investment firm holds a significant stake in a China-based developer of electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries.

Other experts hold much more conservative opinions. In a 2009 Scientific American article about the future of cars, Bill Reinert, a leader in Toyota's Advanced Technology Vehicles, predicts that the car fleet of 2030 will be a mixture of different fuels and power trains. He envisions a highway on which internal-combustion cars will drive alongside well-developed hybrids, which will cruise in the company of a growing number of neighborhood and extended-range electric vehicles.

One of the x-factors in all of these predictions is the impact of fuel-cell electric vehicles, or FCEVs. FCEVs combine hydrogen with oxygen to make electricity. Like plug-in EVs, they emit no harmful tailpipe emissions, but they are still years from mass production. One early success is Honda's FCX Clarity fuel-cell electric vehicle, which is currently being leased to drivers in California. Chevrolet, Ford and GM are also working to develop FCEVs.

By 2030, Reinert expects to see a small number of cars with hydrogen fuel cells on the roadways. But it could take another 10 to 15 years after that before they achieve the economies of scale necessary to drive down costs and increase production volumes. By then, in 2040 or 2045, we could all be driving electric vehicles of one sort or another -- across town and across the country.