Electric vehicles registered in the US

As the number of electric vehicles on American roads has climbed from a curiosity to a genuine traffic presence, the number of satellites launched worldwide has risen with almost identical enthusiasm, producing a correlation of 0.992 that is so tight it makes you suspect Elon Musk is somehow involved in both. He is, of course, which makes this less a spurious correlation and more an accidental biography. Between 2011 and 2023, both trends have risen with the exponential confidence of technologies that have decided the future belongs to them.

The EV registration curve and the satellite launch curve are both S-curves of technology adoption, and they happen to be at roughly the same inflection point in roughly the same decade. EV registrations went from about 17,000 in 2011 to over 3 million by 2023, driven by Tesla's market dominance, battery cost reductions (from $1,100 per kWh to under $140), and government incentives. Satellite launches went from about 80 per year to over 2,800, driven almost entirely by SpaceX's Starlink constellation and similar megaconstellation projects. The shared variable is not just Musk—it is the broader collapse in launch costs (from roughly $54,000 per kilogram to under $3,000 with Falcon 9) and battery costs that has made both technologies economically viable at scale simultaneously.

This is one of the rare correlations on this site where a real person sits at the intersection of both trend lines, which makes it simultaneously more interesting and less instructive. The EVs and the satellites are both riding the same cost curves and the same venture capital enthusiasm, but they would correlate even without a single common CEO. Technology adoption curves look alike because adoption looks alike. The sky, it turns out, is not the limit.