If you haven’t considered buying an electric vehicle yet, there’s a good chance that in the not-so-distant future, the decision will already be made for you. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to automotive and environmental journalist Jim Motavalli to catch-up on the latest news in the electric vehicle space. We learn about EV models of both cars and trucks coming down the pike, how traditional car dealerships in the US have yet to fully embrace the transition to an electric fleet (a transition which experts like Motavalli see as inevitable), what’s holding up the federal government’s efforts to purchase electric vehicles and why German and Japanese automakers remain behind the US in terms of electric vehicle manufacturing.

Narrator 0:02  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Jim Motavalli 0:25  With them putting in these bans, it isn't really protecting anything. Even with the bans, they're still not selling many EVs they haven't really fully committed to it at the dealer level.

Narrator 0:37  If you haven't considered buying an electric vehicle yet, there's a good chance that in the not so distant future, the decision will already be made for you. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to automotive and environmental journalist Jim Motavalli to catch up on the latest news in the electric vehicle space. We learn about EV models of both cars and trucks coming down the pike. How traditional car dealerships in the US have yet to fully embrace the transition to an electric fleet. A transition which experts like motivasi see is inevitable. What's holding up the federal government's efforts to purchase electric vehicles. And why German and Japanese automakers remain behind the US in terms of electric vehicle manufacturing.

Alex Wise  1:35  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Jim Motavalli. Jim is an author and an auto and environmental journalist. Jim - welcome back to Sea Change Radio.

Jim Motavalli - It's great to be on.

Alex Wise - So I wanted to get an update from you. On the electric vehicle. space. We did a piece not so long ago about hydrogen vehicles. But it's been a little while since we've profiled the meat and potatoes of the non fossil fuel fleets out there. First, let's look at the US seems like Tesla gets all the headlines. But there's obviously a lot more to the market than Tesla.

Jim Motavalli 2:15  Yeah, I think we're seeing an explosion of interest and development in the EV space, not yet a huge increase in sales. But it's inching up. I would say that the pace is faster in Europe in China than it is in the United States. But in the US, we're seeing a lot of new startups. The US excels at startup companies. And we're seeing some fairly powerhouse new entries, including Rivian, and lucid, that are about to start selling cars. And I think they're going to do quite well on the marketplace because their entries are smart and makes sense. And we also have just about every global automaker, including all the American ones switching to all EV or announcing dates when they will no longer be producing internal combustion engines, some have actually started announced that they're no longer going to be developing internal combustion engine programs, or that all the new models going forward will be electric. They're making announcements like that, which are pretty dramatic. And I'm not sure the public is fully aware that the entire international auto industry is moving to all electric battery cars.