I've said this before, but the car I currently have will certainly be the last internal combustion engine vehicle that I own. I truthfully even felt a bit weird buying it 6 years ago, but at the time, there weren't that many options other than a Tesla. And I didn't want a Tesla.

Today, there are lots of EV options, and the numbers are starting to show that. When the final figures come in, it is estimated that the US will have sold 15.5 million new cars last year. And of these, about 1.44 million units are expected to have been electric.

This means that we are just under 1 out of every 10 new cars sold in the US. The trend line is also working in the right direction. 1.44 million new EV units is roughly the total number of EVs sold between 2016 and 2021 in the US. 

So things are accelerating. And presumably there are other people like me waiting on the sidelines. I am deliberately roughed in for an EV charging station in my new parking spot and, if/when it comes time to purchase a new car, that's exactly what will get installed.

(I added "if" because, depending on how mobility evolves over the next 5-10 years, there's a chance I may no longer want to own a car.)

This is going to be old news to many of you, but this past week I experienced Tesla's self-driving capabilities for the first time. And I must say that I was very impressed. It did everything from navigate stop-and-go city traffic to navigate lane changes on the highway. Overall, it makes my five-year old car feel pretty quaint. The software is that much more sophisticated and one has to assume that all of this autonomy stuff will only get significantly better as LIDAR becomes common place in production vehicles.

In other car news, North America appears to be narrowing in on an EV charging plug standard. It is Tesla's plug, but it is now appropriately called the North American Charging Standard (NACS) plug. And last week, Electrify America -- which is the largest non-Tesla, fast-charging network in the US -- announced that it would be adding the plug to its network. The company also happens to be owned by Volkswagen. So big and important companies seem to be coalescing around this plug type.

Lastly for today, here's a post by Fred Wilson talking about (1) bi-directional EV charging, (2) the apartment buildings he and his wife are developing, and (3) our ongoing transformation away from a centralized electrical grid to a decentralized one. What he talks about in his post is something that we are actually piloting in a few of Slate's office buildings right now. It's still early days, but I think it's really exciting. Tech seems to be enabling a broader shift toward decentralization. And in the case of our electrical grid, it's going to lead to a more resilient one.

As many of you know, I am an advocate for high-speed rail in Canada. Specifically along the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, which is the most densely populated part of the country. And so I found this comparison interesting:

"If there is one project that would create thousands of jobs, improve business productivity, clean up the air, reduce the output of greenhouse gases and cut the demand for endless highway construction, it would be high-speed electric rail between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, where population densities are high enough to make the project sensible. Cost estimates are all over the map. The University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy put the price tag at about $12-billion, which is $2-billion less than the bucks being thrown at the Volkswagen battery plant alone. But forget it – the Canadian government wants more cars, not fewer. Canadian cities will remain car sewers forever."

The above excerpt is from this opinion piece talking about EVs and the public subsidies being paid to encourage battery production within Canada. I get that we want to be part of this important mobility shift. But we are way behind when it comes to high-speed rail.

And by behind, I mean that we don't have it at all in this country.