The EV plateau is coming. It's bad news for companies like Ford and Tesla.

• Current EV market growth "cannot be sustained," an analyst says.

• The shift from early adopters to regular customers is the next big growing pain.

• The cap for rapid EV growth appears to be around 7% of the market.

After years of rapid growth, the electric vehicle market is heading for a plateau.

For years, plug-ins only accounted for a bit more than 1% of the market as options were limited and adoption was slow. But since 2020, that growth has accelerated with help from a flood of new electric models, improvements to charging infrastructure, and a bigger push by the industry to educate customers on EV purchases.

EV sales in the US hit a record of nearly 6% of all vehicle sales last year, and are on track to surpass that this year, accounting for nearly 9% of sales to individual customers in June alone, according to JD Power.

Along with that growth has come a slew of ambitious goals. Tesla is aiming to produce 2 million vehicles for the first time this year, Ford originally said it was going to build 600,000 EVs this year, and GM is planning to produce roughly 150,000 EVs this year.

But as the industry runs out of enthusiastic early adopters, a plateau for the segment is on the horizon, some analysts say. The first signs of that came last month when Ford dealers told Insider they had to turn away Mustang Mach-E allocations. (Ford later adjusted its EV production goals to reflect the change in demand growth).

"The spectacular growth we've seen over the last few years cannot be sustained. It's just not possible," said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions. "The further up this growth curve we go, the harder it's going to be to get to the next level."