CNN published this article:

Next time you're circling a full parking lot, try to remember what you saw in it just a couple of years ago. Things are different, now. There are a lot more electric vehicles and they aren't just Teslas anymore, either.

"It's not your eyes tricking you," said Matt Degen, an editor at Cox Automotive, a company that owns a number of auto-related websites and firms. "For the longest time, the majority of the EVs on the road were Teslas, and they still get the lion's share of sales, but they're now hardly the only game in town."

Electric vehicles accounted for 5.6% of all new vehicles sold last year, according to Kelley Blue Book. That may not sound like a lot, but as recently as 2019 that figure was just 1.4%. Based on the experience in other global markets - particularly Norway - 5% market share seems to be an important tipping point for wider adoption, said BloombergNEF researcher Corey Cantor. Other markets, such as China and Europe overall, have shown similar trends, according to data provided by BloombergNEF. Bloomberg includes plug-in hybrids in its count of "electric vehicles," but a large majority are purely battery-powered models.

It's unclear exactly why 5% seems to mark the point where EV sales really take off. It could be that it marks the level at which something begins to seem normal. The overall US market share for Hyundai, for example, is about the same as the market share for electric vehicles, according to Cox Automotive, and buying a Hyundai doesn't seem like anything weird or unusual. It's getting to be the same for electric vehicles: It's no longer uncommon to see them on the roads which makes it easier to consider getting one.

Now, electric vehicles just need to become easier to buy.

"I think now the demand is definitely there," said Cantor. "It's just been more a supply side problem of automakers not being able to ship enough."