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THE SURGE: All-Electric Becomes the Norm By Evan Anderson Why Read: While US politicians (and EV CEOs) fool around canceling programs, the entire globe is rapidly shifting to all-electric vehicles. Given the rate of the shift, this is a 10-year cycle of change that is already 2 years in. Read on for a description of the market players and an explanation of the market shifts and the massive battle between rapidly growing Chinese producers and the rest of the world. ______ [. . . ] data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Automotive Trends Report shows that EV sales shares have grown at a faster rate than sales shares of conventional hybrids that don't have a plug: It took about 25 years for hybrids to reach a 10% market share, compared to about 12 years for EVs. - ICCT (January 2024) President Donald Trump suspended all Inflation Reduction Act funding disbursements in an executive order Monday, part of a sweeping set of directives to begin setting the new administration's energy agenda. [. . .] Trump also called for the end of the "electric vehicle mandate," and revoked President Biden's 2021 executive order that called for half of new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2030. - Utility Dive (1/22/25)
We are witnessing a tectonic shift in the automotive market. Despite some headwinds, global expansion in the adoption of electric vehicles has been the year-over-year trend for a decade. But the speed at which EVs are now taking over the global vehicle market is what is truly interesting. In 2024, the world purchased roughly 88.2 million vehicles. Of those, around 17.1 million were EVs (encompassing both full EVs and plug-in hybrids, or PHEVs). This was 25% more than in 2023. Total vehicle sales grew 1.7% globally in the same period. The growth rate of sales of EVs and all vehicles will not, of course, be stable each year. Nor will EVs completely replace all other types of vehicles. But as a back-of-the-envelope calculation for general purposes, this rate of change in the market (were it to hold) would place EVs on a trajectory to represent 100% of sales by the year 2032, just seven or eight years from now. In this context, attempts by the new Trump administration to slow or stop the transition to electric vehicles in the United States doesn't seem particularly important. The rate of market shift is so great that pushing against the tide will only get one so far. Globally, we are headed for an electric future. In the world of "heavy electric," trucking solutions appear to remain on the edge of deployment. Greater progress is being made with electric buses, which are a simpler use case, with more government funding globally. As sales of both are still nascent, we focus this week on the wild world of cars and light trucks, where the biggest growth is currently occurring. To understand the shift, and where the money will be when it is done, let's dive into who is selling all of these increasingly popular vehicles, and where. |
