EV sales continue to rise, but the last year of headlines falsely stating otherwise would leave you thinking they haven’t. After about full year of these lies, it would be nice for journalists to stop pushing this false narrative that they could find the truth behind by simply looking up a single number for once.
Here’s what’s actually happening: Over the course of the last year or so, sales of battery electric vehicles, while continuing to grow, have posted lower year-over-year percentage growth rates than they had in previous years.
This alone is not particularly remarkable – it is inevitable that any growing product or category will show slower percentage growth rates as sales rise, particularly one that has been growing at such a fast rate for so long.
In some recent years, we’ve even seen year-over-year doublings in EV market share (though one of those was 2020->2021, which was anomalous). To expect improvement at that level perpetually would be close to impossible – after 3 years of doubling market share from 2023’s 18% number, EVs would account for more than 100% of the global automotive market, which cannot happen.
Instead of the perpetual 50% CAGR that had been optimistically expected, we are seeing growth rates this year of ~10% in advanced economies, and higher in economies with lower EV penetration (+40% in “rest of world” beyond US/EU/China). Notably, this ~10% growth rate is higher than the above Norway example, which nobody would consider a “slump” at 94% market share.
It’s also clear that EV sales growth rates are being held back in the short term by Tesla, which has heretofore been the global leader in EV sales. Tesla actually has seen a year-over-year reduction in sales in recent quarters – likely at least partially due to chaotic leadership at the wayward EV leader – as buyers have been drawn to other brands, while most of which have seen significant increases in EV sales.
Got a PHEV for our family recently, wanted to go full EV but our region just doesn't have enough charging stations available yet.
While going over the paperwork for the financing, the paperwork guy was talking about how the car company keeps pushing them to order EVs for their lot but they keep refusing. They don't want to sell EVs because they think people don't want them, because they think it just "won't ever work" - so now I think that there may be other car dealers like that who are holding back what options consumers may have in there area. I had to drive 100 miles to buy the PHEV I wanted, none nearby.
Until they make electric vehicles that need as much maintenance and repairs as ICEs car dealers will of course oppose them.
We got a Toyota bz4x (we got a very good deal on it, and I wouldn't recommend it unless you also get a good deal), and the official maintenance schedule is ridiculous and clearly unnecessary. Every 5k miles, you're intended to take it to the dealer to make sure the coolant is topped off, the wheel nuts are on tight, and the floor mats are in place. That's about it. And it'll pop up a "Maintenance Required" warning on the dash to tell you, and it stays there until you get it done.
I have 2 EVs (A Hyundai Kona and a BYD Seal), both don't check the battery coolant until 60,000 kilometers - either toyota doesn't trust their battery system or your dealer is taking you for a ride
It's official from Toyota's maintenance schedule. They're pretty obviously dumbing up things for dealerships, yes.