According to the International Energy Agency, over 14 million electric vehicles, or EVs, are expected to be sold globally in 2023. If this is accurate, EVs would account for about 18 percent of total car sales for the year, a 35 percent increase over 2022. The EV revolution is upon us, and here to help Sea Change Radio listeners decide where to plug-in is automotive journalist, Jim Motavalli. We discuss the puzzling decision by General Motors to shelve the Chevy Bolt, get some recommendations on new EV automakers and models, and examine America’s ongoing fascination with big old gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs.

00:02 Narrator - This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

00:17 Jim Motavalli (JM) - You take a company like, I don't know, Bentley or Lamborghini or one of those. When they come out with an SUV, no matter how crazy it is for their brand concept, it invariably becomes their best-selling vehicle and automakers recognize that.

00:36 Narrator - According to the International Energy Agency, over 14 million electric vehicles, or EVs, are expected to be sold globally in 2023. If this is accurate, EVs would account for about 18 percent of total car sales for the year, a 35 percent increase over 2022. The EV revolution is upon us, and here to help Sea Change Radio listeners decide where to plug-in is automotive journalist, Jim Motavalli. We discuss the puzzling decision by General Motors to shelve the Chevy Bolt, get some recommendations on new EV automakers and models, and examine America’s ongoing fascination with big old gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs.

01:43 Alex Wise (AW) - I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Jim Motavalli. He is a freelance automotive journalist. He contributes to publications such as the New York Times, Barron’s, Auto Week, TechCrunch. Jim, welcome back to Sea Change Radio.

01:58 Jim Motavalli (JM) - Great to be on Sea Change Radio.

02:01 Alex Wise (AW) - So we haven't had you on for a couple of years, but I wanted to dive into some of the evolution of the electric vehicle, the EV space, with you last time we talked, Tesla was riding high. It was by far and away the biggest player in in the space, but you were talking about some of these newer names like Rivian coming around to compete with the Teslas. Why don't you first give us a progress report on some of these non-Tesla brands and how they stack up to the Teslas of the world?

02:43 Jim Motavalli (JM) - Well, there's two things happening. One is all the mainstream automakers are introducing EV's, and those are hitting the market. And they're also the startups, and those include Rivian and Lucid have gotten cars on the road, and they're starting to show up in dealerships and compete with test. But none of them have vehicles in sufficient quantities yet to challenge Tesla in the marketplace. I mean, Tesla is still by far the largest seller in the EV market, but I think in terms of quality and appeal, I think we're now seeing vehicles arrival, Tesla. So their absolute and total dominance is kind of threatened by all these startups. There are companies like Bollinger that have launched and gotten out of the market, so no motors was another one, and there's several EV companies that have not made it, but I think at this point we can say that Rivian and Lucid, they're probably going to go the distance and have very credible vehicles and I was just on a week long ride to drive event with Lucid and their cars are very, very impressive. But you know, they're a startup, so sort of have the teething problems of the startup. They still haven't gotten their production in line with what they want it to be.

04:09 AW - How are numbers stacking up overall in terms of what experts were predicting five years ago in terms of the EV market share versus what it is today? When we're talking about production numbers, we're still far away from making that complete transition to an electric fleet,