Submission statement:
Rapidly declining EV prices means that they will account for an increasingly large proportion of future global car sales. The best progress by far has been in China, Norway and the Netherlands, but other developing countries, European countries and the US have been far slower.
Posted by Desperate_Wear_1866
4 Comments
Electric vehicle ownership has reached a “tipping point” that signals an irreversible shift away from petrol cars, not only in China but parts of south-east Asia and Europe despite stalling in the US, expert research finds.
EVs accounted for a quarter of new car sales globally in 2025 and the pace of growth has continued into the first quarter of 2026.
While Chinese domestic sales fell in the first quarter of 2026 as rebates expired, the rise of Chinese exports elsewhere continued and demand in populous countries such as South Korea and Brazil also surged.
In the EU, the rise in fuel prices sparked by the Middle East conflict boosted the uptake of EVs for the month of March by 49 per cent, the figures show,
In some south-east Asian countries, demand was also stoked further. In Singapore, EVs accounted for 56 per cent of sales in the first two months of the year. In Thailand, they made up 28 per cent of sales between January and March, and 21 per cent in Indonesia.
In other notable markets, the share of new sales was 18 per cent in Turkey and 30 per cent in Uruguay, according to government and industry data.
Such markets account for a small share of global car sales but are where big growth is expected in the future as consumers become richer.
Shifting to cleaner forms of transport is crucial to global targets to tackle climate change as it is the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
“Transport will be electrified . . . but it’s really a question of how fast. That’s not to say that it won’t still be a bumpy road,” said Euan Graham, electricity and data analyst at Ember.
A paper published in Nature Communications from Exeter university and a World Bank economist said an EVs tipping point — or threshold at which a change or an effect cannot be stopped — was “self-propelling” and less contingent on future public policy decisions.
The reversal in US climate policy and a slower than expected shift in some parts of Europe has forced many western carmakers to redraw their EV strategy, costing them more than $75bn to scrap fully electric models and reinvest in hybrid models.
Still, following an analysis of next-generation battery cells from CATL, Tesla and General Motors, investment bank UBS has concluded that EVs were closing the gap with traditional cars across cost, range and charging time, nearing what it called “triple parity”.
“Even in markets that have rather adverse politics or regulation against EVs, you’re not going to stop innovation at the end of the day,” said UBS analyst Patrick Hummel.
“That’s why we are confident that medium to long term, EVs are going to accelerate everywhere and also reaccelerate in the US,” he added.
UBS expects the global share of EVs, plug-in hybrids and extended-range EVs — with a small engine to recharge the battery — to rise to 58 per cent in 2035 from 23 per cent in 2025.
The Exeter university paper, which looked at global sales from 2016-2023, found sales of traditional cars had begun to decline from about 2019.
just goes to show that industrial pales in comparison just bombing the middle east to force EV adoption
Nothing like another ME war to remind people, ″What if I could go places without expensive, disgusting black goop?″
Hell, I’ve looked at switching to an EV because of all this. I think the biggest turn off for me, aside from some of the range limitations, have been the overly “techy” aesthetics, like huge screens, a lack of buttons, no door handles, weird shifters, etc. But now everybody has moved in that direction and there are some pretty sleek EVs. The i4 and the Rivian, for example.