Back in 2008, President Obama set a goal of one million plug-in vehicles, in the U.S., by 2015. Due to many factors, including low gasoline prices, plug-in vehicles being slammed by conservative media and politicians and lack of advertising by manufacturers, this goal was not achieved. At the end of 2015, there were only 406,421 plug-in vehicles on American roads. However, through Tesla Motors’ status as a media darling and Elon Musk’s ascension to Steve Jobs-like status, as well as word-of-mouth fan support, sales have steadily climbed and I believe 2018 is the year the goal will be achieved. If plug-in sales, in the second half of this year, only equal the first half of the year’s sales, the one millionth plug-in will be sold in December of this year! As shown in the chart below, just a repeat of the first six month’s sales of 2018, will result in 1,004,293 plug-in vehicles having been sold in the U.S., since 2010.
As regular readers of my blog know, December has a spike in plug-in vehicle sales, due to buyers being able to snag the $7,500 Federal Income Tax credit, just a couple of months after their vehicle purchase. Conversely, sales are very low in January and February, possibly for the opposite reason (or people overspent on Christmas…) This statistic, coupled with many more manufacturers introducing new plug-in vehicles, should cause sales to exceed historical trends. So, in actuality, the one million goal will probably come before December. 
For those of you too young to get the reference:
Of course, I could have said the journey to one million plug-in vehicles was a “fantastic voyage…” (Sorry. I seem to be on a Raquel Welch riff today…)
