I'm a bit of a Statistics wonk myself and can attest that you really need to look past the raw data at times and control for certain factors.

Corporate fleet purchases by outfits needing to reduce their carbon footprints and "China", with its unique punitive policies toward gasoline powered vehicles and enforced patronage of domestic products are what are called statistical outliers and don't reflect true public demand for EV's. Corrected for these factors, (no I haven't done the math), you could safely say that "consumer-based" EV registrations probably made up for 10%, at best, (certainly not 20%), of the 15.5 million new registrations in 2017. You've also got to be careful about "snapshot" data relating to a particular time period, (year), as that too could be an anomoly. Commercial fleets, for example, having met quotas for emission reductions, may not be making new purchases as aggressively going forward. In China, 1.7 million of the EV's registered in 2017 were produced domestically and include buses and commercial trucks. This, again, makes Chinese EV's an anomoly as Government fiat has a huge influence on consumer decisions. Toyota, in China for instance virtually stopped selling overnight over a territorial dispute involving a tiny Pacific island. In China, one is careful to follow policy regardless of personal desire. I worked there for over 5 years and can attest to this too.

Not knocking your post bro but Bloomberg is not one to let things like conventional approaches to statistical context get in the way of his narratives. Its the same as with data related to gun violence. The resulting statistics, when you don't omit outliers like Chicago's strictly gang related violence, overstate risks faced by the public in general and children (under 19 yo) in particular. In the same way, this Bloomberg EV data "no doubt" gives an overstated impression of the popularity of EV's with consumers. Lastly, EV purchases are blessed with massive government subsidies. This directly skews the data toward greater, (and false), consumer demand for a price sensitive product.

All of this notwithstanding, Elon Musk remains a conman.

 

you posted this "All of this notwithstanding, Elon Musk remains a conman."
Not at all the guy did a deal with our SA Government for a a complete power deal http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-2...-in-sa/9183868 in 100 days or it would be free,or it would be free was the proviso and he got it running ahead of schedule ,it is a great deal and it's stopped peak usage black outs and brown outs already to tens thousands of homes,and kept businesses from losses through power outages too , it is a fantastic thing .
So yea who is the con here ?

 

The world used to look to us for innovation, especially in the 50s and 60’s. You nailed here with the “bottom line” being a driver. And those whose bottom line is most powerful drive the discussion. The Onion did a satirical piece a while back that sums this up well.

https://politics.theonion.com/in-the...rth-1819595044

 

No thanks.

 

It will come with one of those new style helmets that have a hole for your man bun to poke out.