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Title: EV Sales Are Still Rising. They Have Not Slumped

Link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/11/15/...

"Media headlines suggesting some slowdown in EV sales are simply incorrect,"
writes the site Electrek, "and leave out the bigger picture that gas car
sales actually are dropping..." Over the course of the last two years or so,
sales of battery electric vehicles, while continuing to grow, have posted
lower year-over-year percentage growth rates than they had in years prior. EV
sales used to grow at 50%+ per year, but for the last couple years, they have
grown closer to ~25% per year. 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 had 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... We have seen a global EV sales growth rate of
23% in the first 10 months of this year, according to a report just released
by Rho Motion (recently acquired by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence). That
includes a +32% bump in Europe, +22% bump in China, +4% in North America, and
a big +48% bump in the "rest of the world." Notably, this 23% global growth
rate is higher than last year's YTD growth rate, which was 22% at this
time... In covering these trends, some journalists have attempted to use the
less-wrong phrase "slower growth," showing that EV sales are still growing,
but at a lower percentage change than previously seen. But for the first ten
months of this year, that isn't true - EV sales are up more in 2025 than in
2024 by a percentage basis. They are also up in raw sales numbers - in 2024,
EV sales grew by a larger number than in 2023. And the same is true so far in
2025. Going back to 2023, 10.7 million EVs were sold globally in the first 10
months. Then in 2024, 13.3 million were sold, a difference of 2.6 million.
And so far in 2025, 16.5 million EVs have sold, a difference of 3.2 million.
Not only are the numbers getting bigger, but the growth in unit sales is
getting bigger as well. Even in America, the EV market "has increased so far
this year, with 11.7% US EV sales growth YTD." In terms of US hybrid sales,
much has been made of customers "shifting from EVs to hybrids," which is also
not the case. Conventional gas-hybrid sales are indeed up and plug-in
hybrids, which have grown more slowly than gas-hybrids/BEVs, have also shown
some growth lately. But gas-hybrid sales have not come at the cost of EV
sales, rather at the cost of gas-only car sales. Because that's just the
thing: the number of gas-only vehicles being sold worldwide is a number that
actually is falling. That number continues to go down year over year. Sales
of new gas-powered cars are down by about a quarter from their peak in 2017,
and show no signs of recovering... And yet, somehow, virtually every headline
you read is about the "EV sales slump," rather than the "gas-car sales
slump." The one you keep hearing about isn't happening, but the one you
rarely hear about is happening... No matter what region of the world you're
in, EV sales were up in the first 10 months of this year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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