Friday Factoids: The Scale of Obama’s Electric Vehicle Challenge

Over at the Atlantic, technology writer Alexis Madrigal ran the numbers and found some pretty daunting scale issues with Obama's seemingly ambitious SOTU goal for electric vehicles (EV): 1,000,000 by 2015.

[Note: updated on 1/31 to correct typo in one of our figures]

In the comment-free tradition of this humble feature, here's a brief run-down:
 

• Obama's goal: 1,000,000 new EV's by 2015 (250,000 per year, average)
   
• New cars sold in 2009: ~10,000,000 (note: due the the recession, 2009 was a lower-than-average year for car sales. 12-14,000,000 may be more typical)
   
• Total vehicles in the U.S. fleet: 250,000,000 (250 times Obama's goal!)
   
• Total EV's on the road today (2007): ~70,000-80,000
   
• Total hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) sold in the past decade (as of 2009): 1,500,000

You can read the full post (and find additional sources) here.