Electric vehicles registered in the US

Electric vehicles and SpaceX rockets have both risen in number with the kind of exponential growth that makes traditional industries feel personally attacked. The correlation is 0.968 across nine years, and yes, the same person is substantially responsible for both curves, which makes this less a spurious correlation and more a one-man economic indicator. Between 2015 and 2023, Elon Musk managed to simultaneously electrify the American highway and populate low Earth orbit, which is either the greatest case study in vertical integration or the most elaborate midlife crisis in human history.

Tesla's dominance of the early EV market means that EV registrations are substantially a Tesla metric until about 2021, when competitors began making real volume. SpaceX launches, similarly, are the primary driver of the global launch cadence increase. Both benefited from the same technological tailwind: dramatic cost reductions in manufacturing at scale. Battery pack costs fell from about $400 per kWh in 2015 to under $140 by 2023, while SpaceX's Falcon 9 reusability cut launch costs from roughly $54,000 per kilogram to under $3,000. Both curves are S-curves of technology adoption that happen to share an inflection decade, a common investor base, and a CEO who tweets about both of them at 2 AM.

Nine data points of EVs and rockets is a correlation that exists partly by genuine coincidence, partly by shared economics, and partly by the peculiar biographical fact that one person sits at the intersection. Remove the biography and the correlation would likely still exist, because cost curves and adoption curves look alike regardless of who signs the purchase orders. The rockets launch, the cars charge, and the stock price fluctuates.