Five years ago, before I started following electric vehicles, I had never noticed an all-electric vehicle on the roads. It was 2014 and I had lived in a small, relatively rural, mountain town for a couple years already. Today, the picture is significantly different, in some ways better, and other’s worse. Electric vehicles have taken to the streets and proven their worth, yet 2018 carbon emissions in all sectors went up in the U.S. and globally.

So, as of January 25, 2019, here is the data collection of every Tesla sighting from my first in 2015 until now. The yellow line records cumulative sightings. The Red is Model S/X sightings, and the blue is cumulative Model 3’s.

Today, I am ending a data collection experiment I began those years ago. In a way, it is a nod to the transformation that has occurred. In Leadville, CO, year 2015, my data collection was pretty simple. Now, it is an unnecessary burden that I must curtail.

The graph is shaped as I had hoped. The trendline for total sightings is almost perfectly exponential. If this growth rate were to continue for the next 3.5 years, I will have seen almost 11 million Teslas. I hope this is the case, and I also hope I will see an equivalent or greater number of other company’s electric vehicles on the roads in that time.

The only way to fight an exponential is with an exponential. In the face of climate change, we need more efficiency and decarbonization transformations to look akin to this graph. These accelerations are what continue to inspire my “applied hope” toward the challenge, as Amory Lovins has often implored us to find.

The war on entropy continues!