Geoff Ralston:

The electric car is going to take over the world. Soon. Let me explain.
 
 75% of US consumers and over 85% of US millennials own smartphones. Perhaps more amazing is that 1/4 of people in the world use a smartphone today. Ten years ago a prediction that this would be the future would have been met with scorn or laughter. In fact, in 2005 few if any of the futurists would have even been able to imagine the kind of device most of us now depend upon. Naturally, the release of the iPhone in 2007 changed everything, but it is likely that the smartphone era was inevitable. Steve Jobs just ushered it in a few years early.
 
 In June of 2012 Tesla released the Model S and the results will be equally transformative. Current predictions of the future of electric cars are as wrong as any predictions about the future of mobile phones made in 2005. It is likely that electric car penetration, at least in the US, will take off at an exponential rate over the next 5-10 years rendering laughable the paltry predictions of future electric car sales being made today [1].