Electric Vehicle Sales Growth Is Slowing Globally. Here’s Why

With road transportation accounting for about 15% of greenhouse gas emissions, transitioning to cleaner vehicles is a linchpin in national efforts to meet climate-change mitigation targets. Governments have encouraged a transition to electric vehicles with massive subsidies, and legacy carmakers are changing their offerings in a slow farewell to the combustion-engine era. EV demand continues to expand, but the rate of growth has slowed.

Global sales of EVs are still rising, but growth is slowing. According to BloombergNEF, sales of all-electric vehicles plus plug-in hybrids that can also be powered by gasoline or diesel more than doubled in 2021 and grew 62% in 2022. But the figure was 31% last year, when 15% of all vehicles sold were plug-ins. BNEF forecasts that the annual increase will slow again to 21% this year. China, where the government has used generous incentives to expand the nascent carmaking industry and make EVs affordable, is by far the largest market, accounting for 59% of 13.8 million plug-in sales in 2023, excluding commercial vehicles. Europe accounted for 23% and North America for 12%.