The International Energy Agency has a deep dive on global electric vehicle sales. Sales everywhere have accelerated sharply over the last five years. Of the countries covered, only Norway has gotten close to 100% of all new sales. Other countries that are over 50% are Nepal, Iceland, China, and Singapore. Sales are particularly lagging in the U.S. and Canada. The IEA article has a visualization, but I also like one from Rest of the World based on the IEA data. (I was not able to embed either of them.)

Government subsidies are part of the reason for these trends, but the economics is also starting to favor electric vehicles in many places, even just looking at purchase price which is what consumers are largely going to respond to. But the availability of mass-produced low-cost Chinese models is also a big part of the story, particularly in Southeast Asia and in China itself.

I have a few thoughts. First, it’s not a story of subsidies skewing the benefit-cost picture towards electric vehicles when it would not otherwise be. The positive benefit-cost ratio is there, and government policy is helping many countries achieve commercialization and scale faster than they otherwise would, although the shift is inevitable even in the U.S. Second, U.S. subsidies TOWARDS liquid fossil fuels, along with lack of infrastructure investment, ARE skewing the positive benefit-cost ratio to negative for our already cash-strapped consumers, while propaganda hoodwinks us into thinking the rest of the world doesn’t have nice things being denied to us. Third, with the economics clearly favoring electric vehicles over the life cycle, corporate and state/local government fleets will be able to do the math and make the right choice, and this will eventually start to move the market. The federal government will follow suit eventually when political winds shift. And fourth, even if the benefit-cost ratio were not positive, the insane Iran invasion would be incentivizing China and Southeast Asia to shift toward electric and away from liquid fossil fuels from the Middle East, to help manage geopolitical risk. So in this sense U.S. policy may have moved the needle significantly towards electric for 2 billion or so consumers abroad, even while our 350 odd million at home are being successfully hoodwinked. Some of the energy to fuel these vehicles will shift from oil to coal in the near to medium term, which is not ideal, but it still represents an increase in efficiency (I think) and the economics will continue to shift toward renewables (and nuclear?) over time.

By the way, I had to refresh for myself: The IEA is an OECD institution, while the IAEA is a UN institution. Neither should be confused with the EIA, which is a U.S. government agency. My fingers really want to type IAE for some reason, and apparently I am not alone, but that is not a real agency.