High-rise headaches: EV charging in Canada's condos, apartments and MURBs a mixed experience

EV Tipping Point signals the S-curve shift to mainstream adoption as new car sales pass 5%, with the US joining Europe and China; charging infrastructure, costs, and supply align to accelerate electric car market penetration.

Key Points

The EV tipping point is when fully electric cars reach about 5% of new sales, triggering rapid S-curve adoption.

✅ 5% of new car sales marks start of mass adoption

✅ Follows S-curve seen in phones, LEDs, internet

✅ Barriers ease: charging, cost declines, model availability

Many people of a certain age can recall the first time they held a smartphone. The devices were weird and expensive and novel enough to draw a crowd at parties. Then, less than a decade later, it became unusual not to own one.

That same society-altering shift is happening now with electric vehicles, according to a Bloomberg analysis of adoption rates around the world. The US is the latest country to pass what’s become a critical EV tipping point: an EV inflection point when 5% of new car sales are powered only by electricity. This threshold signals the start of mass EV adoption, the period when technological preferences rapidly flip, according to the analysis.

For the past six months, the US joined Europe and China — collectively the three largest car markets — in moving beyond the 5% tipping point, as recent U.S. EV sales indicate. If the US follows the trend established by 18 countries that came before it, a quarter of new car sales could be electric by the end of 2025. That would be a year or two ahead of most major forecasts.

How Fast Is the Switch to Electric Cars?
19 countries have reached the 5% tipping point, and an earlier-than-expected shift is underway—then everything changes

Why is 5% so important? 
Most successful new technologies — electricity, televisions, mobile phones, the internet, even LED lightbulbs — follow an S-shaped adoption curve, with EVs going from zero to 2 million in five years according to market data. Sales move at a crawl in the early-adopter phase, then surprisingly quickly once things go mainstream. (The top of the S curve represents the last holdouts who refuse to give up their old flip phones.)

Electric cars inline tout
In the case of electric vehicles, 5% seems to be the point when early adopters are overtaken by mainstream demand. Before then, sales tend to be slow and unpredictable, and still behind gas cars in most markets. Afterward, rapidly accelerating demand ensues.

It makes sense that countries around the world would follow similar patterns of EV adoption. Most impediments are universal: there aren’t enough public chargers, grid capacity concerns linger, the cars are expensive and in limited supply, buyers don’t know much about them. Once the road has been paved for the first 5%, the masses soon follow.

Thus the adoption curve followed by South Korea starting in 2021 ends up looking a lot like the one taken by China in 2018, which is similar to Norway after its first 5% quarter in 2013. The next major car markets approaching the tipping point this year include Canada, Australia, and Spain, suggesting that within a decade many drivers could be in EVs worldwide. 

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California Electric School Bus Mandate 2035 sets zero-emission requirements, outlines funding, state reimbursement, fleet electrification, infrastructure, and cost estimates, highlighting exemptions for frontier districts and alignment with clean transportation and climate policy goals.

Key Points

California's 2035 policy requires all new school buses be zero-emission, with funding and limited rural exemptions.

✅ Mandates zero-emission purchases for new school buses from 2035

✅ Estimates $5B transition cost with state reimbursement support

✅ Frontier districts may apply for 5-year extensions

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a new legislation requiring that from 2035, all newly ordered or contracted school buses must be zero-emission, a move aligned with California's push for expanded EV grid capacity statewide.

The state estimates that switching to electric school buses will cost around five billion dollars over the next decade, a projection reflecting electric bus challenges seen globally. That is because a diesel equivalent costs about 200,000 dollars less than a battery-electric version, as highlighted by critical analyses of California policy. And “the California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state.”

There are about 23,800 school buses on the road in California. About 500 are already electric, with conversion initiatives expected to expand the total, and 2,078 electric buses have been ordered.

There are – as always- exceptions to the rule. So-called “frontier districts,” which have less than 600 students or are in a county with a population density of less than ten persons per square mile, can file for a five-year extension, drawing on lessons from large electric bus fleets about route length and charging constraints. However, they must “reasonably demonstrate that a daily planned bus route for transporting pupils to and from school cannot be serviced through available zero-emission technology in 2035.”

Califonia is the fifth US state to mandate electric school buses, and jurisdictions like British Columbia are deploying electric school buses as well. Connecticut, Maryland, Maine, and New York implemented similar legislation, while California continues broader zero-emission freight adoption with Volvo VNR electric trucks entering service across the state.

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California EV mandate will phase out new gas cars, raising power demand and requiring renewable energy, grid upgrades, fast chargers, time-of-use rates, and vehicle-to-grid to stabilize loads and reduce emissions statewide.

Key Points

California's order ends new gas-car sales by 2035, driving grid upgrades, charging infrastructure, and cleaner transport.

✅ 25% higher power demand requires new generation and storage

✅ Time-of-use pricing and midday charging reduce grid stress

✅ Vehicle-to-grid and falling battery costs enable reliability

Leaning on the hood of a shiny red electric Ford Mustang, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Wednesday to end the sale of new gas-burning cars in his state in 15 years, a move with looming challenges for regulators and industry.

Now comes the hard part.

Energy consultants and academics say converting all passenger cars and trucks to run on electricity in California could raise power demand by as much as 25%. That poses a major challenge to state power grids as California is already facing periodic rolling blackouts as it rapidly transitions to renewable energy.

California will need to boost power generation, scale up its network of fast charging stations, enhance its electric grid to handle the added load and hope that battery technology continues to improve enough that millions in America’s most populous state can handle long freeway commutes to schools and offices without problems.

“We’ve got 15 years to do the work,” said Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, owner of Southern California Edison, a utility serving 15 million people in the state. “Frankly the state agencies are going to have to do their part. We’ve got to get to the permitting processes, the approvals; all of that work is going to have to get accelerated to meet [Wednesday’s] target.”

Switching from petroleum fuels to electricity to phase out the internal combustion engine won’t happen all at once—Mr. Newsom’s order applies to sales of new vehicles, so older gas-powered cars will be on the road in California for many years to come. But the mandate means the state will face a growing demand for megawatts.

California is already facing a shortfall of power supplies over the next couple of years. The problem was highlighted last month when a heat wave blanketed the western U.S. and the state’s grid operator instituted rolling blackouts on two occasions.

“It is too early to tell what kind of impact the order will have on our power grid, and we don’t have any specific analysis or projections,” said Anne Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the California Independent System Operator, which runs the grid.

Currently, California faces a crunchtime in the early evening as solar power falls off and demand to power air conditioners remains relatively high. Car charging presents a new potential issue: what happens if surging demand threatens to crash the grid during peak hours?

Caroline Winn, the chief executive of San Diego Gas & Electric, a utility owned by Sempra Energy that serves 3.6 million people, said there will need to be rules and rates that encourage people to charge their cars at certain times of the day, amid broader control over charging debates.

“We need to get the rules right and the markets right, informed by lessons from 2021, in order to resolve this issue because certainly California is moving that way,” she said.

The grid will need to be upgraded to prepare for millions of new electric vehicles. The majority of people who own them usually charge them at home, which would mean changes to substations and distribution circuits to accommodate multiple homes in a neighborhood drawing power to fill up batteries. The state’s three main investor-owned utilities are spending billions of dollars to harden the grid to prevent power equipment from sparking catastrophic wildfires.

“We have a hell of a lot of work to do nationally. California is ahead of everybody and they have a hell of a lot of work to do,” said Chris Nelder, who studies EV-grid integration at the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy and environment-policy organization that promotes clean-energy solutions.

Mr. Nelder believes the investment will be worth it, because internal combustion engines generate so much waste heat and emissions of uncombusted hydrocarbons that escape out of tailpipes. Improving energy efficiency by upgrading the electrical system could result in lower bills for customers. “We will eliminate a vast amount of waste from the energy system and make it way more efficient,” he said.

Some see the growth of electric vehicles as an opportunity more than a challenge. In the afternoon, when electricity demand is high but the sun is setting and solar power drops off quickly, batteries in passenger cars, buses and other vehicles could release power back into the electric grid to help grid stability across the system, said Matt Petersen, chairman of the Transportation Electrification Partnership, a public-private effort in Los Angeles to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles.

The idea is known as “vehicle-to-grid” and has been discussed in a number of countries expanding EV use, including the U.K. and Denmark.

“We end up with rolling batteries that can discharge power when needed,” Mr. Petersen said, adding, “The more electric vehicles we add to the grid, the more renewable energy we can add to the grid.”

One big hurdle for the widespread deployment of electric cars is driving down the cost of batteries to make the cars more affordable. This week, Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk said he expected to have a $25,000 model ready by about 2023, signaling a broader EV boom in the U.S.

Shirley Meng, director of the Sustainable Power and Energy Center at the University of California, San Diego, said she believed batteries would continue to provide better performance at a lower cost.

“I am confident the battery technology is ready,” she said. Costs are expected to fall as new kinds of materials and metals can be used in the underlying battery chemistry, dropping prices. “Batteries are good now, and they will be better in the next 10 years.”

John Eichberger, executive director of the Fuels Institute, a nonprofit research group launched by the National Association of Convenience Stores, said he hoped that the California Air Resources Board, which is tasked with developing new rules to implement Mr. Newsom’s order, will slow the timeline if the market and electric build-out is running behind.

“We need to think about these critical infrastructure issues because transportation is not optional,” he said. “How do we develop a system that can guarantee consumers that they can get the energy when they need it?”

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UK Grid Connection Fast-Track would let the Energy Secretary instruct network operators and National Grid ESO to accelerate substation upgrades and transmission links for Tata's gigafactory, electric arc furnaces, and ready-to-build renewable projects.

Key Points

A UK plan letting the energy secretary fast-track grid connections via priority substation and transmission upgrades.

✅ Prioritizes substations and lines for strategic projects

✅ Supports Tata gigafactory and electric arc furnace conversions

✅ Complements Ofgem queue reforms and National Grid ESO changes

The UK energy secretary could be handed powers to fast-track connecting electricity-hungry projects, such as Jaguar Land Rover’s owner Tata’s planned electric battery factory, to the grid, under plans being discussed between government and regulators as part of the government’s green industrial revolution strategy.

Amid concerns about supply delays of up to 15 years in hooking up large schemes, the Guardian understands the move would allow Claire Coutinho to request that energy network companies accelerate upgrades to substations and power lines to connect specific new developments.

It is understood that the government and the regulator Ofgem have told National Grid’s electricity systems operator that they are “minded” to adopt its grid reform proposals to change the model for connections, which now moves at a pace set by each network operator.

A source said: “Foreign investors need assurances that, if these things are going to be built, then they can be hooked up quickly. There are physical assets, like substations and cross-Channel cables that transmission companies will need to build or upgrade.”

The government is belatedly attempting to tackle a logjam that has resulted in some developments facing a 10- to 15-year wait for a connection to the grid. Ofgem announced on Monday plans to remove “zombie” projects from the queue to connect up to speed up those ready to produce renewable power for the grid, with wind leading the power mix.

Although no equivalent queue exists for those looking to take power from the grid, ministers and officials are concerned that large projects could struggle to secure final investment and proceed without guarantees over their connection to the electricity supply.

Sources said changes to the rules had been proposed with several big projects in mind: Tata’s new £4bn electric battery factory, expected to be built in Somerset; and the switch to electric arc furnaces at Britain’s biggest steelworks at Port Talbot in south Wales, also owned by the Indian group.

The £1.25bn plan from British Steel, which is owned by China’s Jingye, to replace two blast furnaces at Scunthorpe steelworks, with an electric arc furnace at the north Lincolnshire plant and another at a site in Teesside, North Yorkshire, has also formed part of the proposals. Negotiations over the closure of blast furnaces at Port Talbot and Scunthorpe are expected to lead to thousands of job losses.

All three projects are likely to involve significant investment from the UK government, where a state-owned generation firm has been touted as a cost-saving option, alongside the companies’ overseas owners.

Britain has 10 distribution network operators, including National Grid and Northern Powergrid, which operate monopolies in their regions and handle transmission of power from the grid to end users.

Sources said the move could be announced as soon as this month, and may be included within the “connections action plan”, a broader overhaul of Britain’s network connections.

The plan, which is expected to be announced alongside the chancellor’s autumn statement next week, will rebalance the planning system to help speed up the connection of new solar and windfarms to the grid, as the biggest offshore windfarm begins UK supply this week.

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EV Price Parity is nearing reality in Europe as subsidies, falling battery costs, higher energy density, and expanding charging infrastructure push Tesla, Volkswagen, and Renault to compete under EU CO2 regulations and fleet targets.

Key Points

EV price parity means EVs match ICE cars on total ownership cost as subsidies fade and batteries get cheaper.

✅ Battery pack costs trending toward $100/kWh

✅ EU CO2 rules and incentives accelerate adoption

✅ Charging networks reduce range anxiety and TCO

An electric Volkswagen ID.3 for the same price as a Golf. A Tesla Model 3 that costs as much as a BMW 3 Series. A Renault Zoe electric subcompact whose monthly lease payment might equal a nice dinner for two in Paris.

As car sales collapsed in Europe because of the pandemic, one category grew rapidly: electric vehicles, a shift that some analysts say could put most drivers within a decade on battery power. One reason is that purchase prices in Europe are coming tantalizingly close to the prices for cars with gasoline or diesel engines.

At the moment this near parity is possible only with government subsidies that, depending on the country, can cut more than $10,000 from the final price. Carmakers are offering deals on electric cars to meet stricter European Union regulations on carbon dioxide emissions. In Germany, an electric Renault Zoe can be leased for 139 euros a month, or $164.

Electric vehicles are not yet as popular in the United States, largely because government incentives are less generous, but an emerging American EV boom could change that trajectory. Battery-powered cars account for about 2 percent of new car sales in America, while in Europe the market share is approaching 5 percent. Including hybrids, the share rises to nearly 9 percent in Europe, according to Matthias Schmidt, an independent analyst in Berlin.

As electric cars become more mainstream, the automobile industry is rapidly approaching the tipping point, an inflection point for the market, when, even without subsidies, it will be as cheap, and maybe cheaper, to own a plug-in vehicle than one that burns fossil fuels. The carmaker that reaches price parity first may be positioned to dominate the segment.

A few years ago, industry experts expected 2025 would be the turning point. But technology is advancing faster than expected, and could be poised for a quantum leap. Elon Musk is expected to announce a breakthrough at Tesla’s “Battery Day” event on Tuesday that would allow electric cars to travel significantly farther without adding weight.

The balance of power in the auto industry may depend on which carmaker, electronics company or start-up succeeds in squeezing the most power per pound into a battery, what’s known as energy density. A battery with high energy density is inherently cheaper because it requires fewer raw materials and less weight to deliver the same range.

“We’re seeing energy density increase faster than ever before,” said Milan Thakore, a senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultant which recently pushed its prediction of the tipping point ahead by a year, to 2024.

Some industry experts are even more bullish. Hui Zhang, managing director in Germany of NIO, a Chinese electric carmaker with global ambitions, said he thought parity could be achieved in 2023.

Venkat Viswanathan, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University who closely follows the industry, is more cautious, though EV revolution skeptics argue the revolution is overstated. But he said: “We are already on a very accelerated timeline. If you asked anyone in 2010 whether we would have price parity by 2025, they would have said that was impossible.”

This transition will probably arrive at different times for different segments of the market. High-end electric vehicles are pretty close to parity already. The Tesla Model 3 and the gas-powered BMW 3 Series both sell for about $41,000 in the United States.

A Tesla may even be cheaper to own than a BMW because it never needs oil changes or new spark plugs and electricity is cheaper, per mile, than gasoline. Which car a customer chooses is more a matter of preference, particularly whether an owner is willing to trade the convenience of gas stations for charging points that take more time. (On the other hand, owners can also charge their Teslas at home.)

Consumers tend to focus on sticker prices, and it will take longer before unsubsidized electric cars cost as little to drive off a dealer’s lot as an economy car, even for shoppers weighing whether it’s the right time to buy an electric car now.

The race to build a better battery
The holy grail in the electric vehicle industry has been to push the cost of battery packs — the rechargeable system that stores energy — below $100 per kilowatt-hour, the standard measure of battery power. That is the point, more or less, at which propelling a vehicle with electricity will be as cheap as it is with gasoline.

Current battery packs cost around $150 to $200 per kilowatt-hour, depending on the technology. That means a battery pack costs around $20,000. But the price has dropped 80 percent since 2008, according to the United States Department of Energy.

All electric cars use lithium-ion batteries, but there are many variations on that basic chemistry, and intense competition to find the combination of materials that stores the most power for the least weight.

For traditional car companies, this is all very scary. Internal combustion engines have not changed fundamentally for decades, but battery technology is still wide open. There are even geopolitical implications. China is pouring resources into battery research, seeing the shift to electric power as a chance for companies like NIO to make their move on Europe and someday, American, markets. In less than a decade, the Chinese battery maker CATL has become one of the world’s biggest manufacturers.

Everyone is trying to catch Tesla
The California company has been selling electric cars since 2008 and can draw on years of data to calculate how far it can safely push a battery’s performance without causing overheating or excessive wear. That knowledge allows Tesla to offer better range than competitors who have to be more careful. Tesla’s four models are the only widely available electric cars that can go more than 300 miles on a charge, according to Kelley Blue Book.

On Tuesday, Mr. Musk could unveil a technology offering 50 percent more storage per pound at lower cost, according to analysts at the Swiss bank UBS. If so, competitors could recede even further in the rearview mirror.

“The traditional car industry is still behind,” said Peter Carlsson, who ran Tesla’s supplier network in the company’s early days and is now chief executive of Northvolt, a new Swedish company that has contracts to manufacture batteries for Volkswagen and BMW.

“But,” Mr. Carlsson said, “there is a massive amount of resources going into the race to beat Tesla. A number, not all, of the big carmakers are going to catch up.”

The traditional carmakers’ best hope to avoid oblivion will be to exploit their expertise in supply chains and mass production to churn out economical electrical cars by the millions.

A key test of the traditional automakers’ ability to survive will be Volkswagen’s new battery-powered ID.3, which will start at under €30,000, or $35,000, after subsidies and is arriving at European dealerships now. By using its global manufacturing and sales network, Volkswagen hopes to sell electric vehicles by the millions within a few years. It plans to begin selling the ID.4, an electric sport utility vehicle, in the United States next year. (ID stands for “intelligent design.”)

But there is a steep learning curve.

“We have been mass-producing internal combustion vehicles since Henry Ford. We don’t have that for battery vehicles. It’s a very new technology,” said Jürgen Fleischer, a professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in southwestern Germany whose research focuses on battery manufacturing. “The question will be how fast can we can get through this learning curve?”

It’s not just about the batteries
Peter Rawlinson, who led design of the Tesla Model S and is now chief executive of the electric car start-up Lucid, likes to wow audiences by showing up at events dragging a rolling carry-on bag containing the company’s supercompact drive unit. Electric motor, transmission and differential in one, the unit saves space and, along with hundreds of other weight-saving tweaks, will allow the company’s Lucid Air luxury car — which the company unveiled on Sept. 9 — to travel more than 400 miles on a charge, Mr. Rawlinson said.

His point is that designers should focus on things like aerodynamic drag and weight to avoid the need for big, expensive batteries in the first place. “There is kind of a myopia,” Mr. Rawlinson said. “Everyone is talking about batteries. It’s the whole system.”

“We have been mass-producing internal combustion vehicles since Henry Ford,” said Jürgen Fleischer, a professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. “We don’t have that for battery vehicles.”

A charger on every corner would help
When Jana Höffner bought an electric Renault Zoe in 2013, driving anywhere outside her home in Stuttgart was an adventure. Charging stations were rare, and didn’t always work. Ms. Höffner drove her Zoe to places like Norway or Sicily just to see if she could make it without having to call for a tow.

Ms. Höffner, who works in online communication for the state of Baden-Württemberg, has since traded up to a Tesla Model 3 equipped with software that guides her to the company’s own network of chargers, which can fill the battery to 80 percent capacity in about half an hour. She sounds almost nostalgic when she remembers how hard it was to recharge back in the electric-vehicle stone age.

“Now, it’s boring,” Ms. Höffner said. “You say where you want to go and the car takes care of the rest.”

The European Union has nearly 200,000 chargers, far short of the three million that will be needed when electric cars become ubiquitous, according to Transport & Environment, an advocacy group. The United States remains far behind, with less than half as many as Europe, even as charging networks jostle under federal electrification efforts.

But the European network is already dense enough that owning and charging an electric car is “no problem,” said Ms. Höffner, who can’t charge at home and depends on public infrastructure.
 

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Solar has become the EU’s main source of electricity, marking a historic turning point in Europe’s energy mix as solar power surpasses nuclear and wind, accelerates renewable expansion, lowers carbon emissions, and strengthens the EU’s clean energy transition.

Why has Solar Become the EU’s Main Source of Electricity?

Solar has become the EU’s primary source of electricity due to rapid solar expansion, lower installation costs, and robust clean energy policies, which have boosted generation, reduced fossil fuel dependence, and accelerated Europe’s transition toward sustainability.

✅ Surging solar capacity and falling costs

✅ Policy support for renewable energy growth

✅ Reduced reliance on oil, gas, and coal