Electric car sales keep rising, even as headlines would have you believe otherwise. Gas car sales, however, actually *are* down.
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.
Elon Musk has repeatedly said EV sales worldwide are slowing as an excuse for why Tesla sales are slowing, rather than blaming his poor leadership. Repeat a lie often enough and it enters the public consciousness
Sales slowing is only one variable in the “growth” equation. Specifically, are sales of gas vehicles slowing more than sales of electric cars? Yes.
People are replacing vehicles at some standard rate, but growth of EVs is dependent on what percentage of new vehicle sales are gas versus electric. As long as people aren’t moving back to gas cars en masse, the growth of the segment can continue to rise, even if sales overall are slowing.
The statistics I can find suggests EVs make up between 5% and 15% of new cars sales in the US. For comparison, in China the majority of new cars are EVs.
This is likely due to the difference in market segments, electric vehicles in North America occupy the high-end segment, which prices out most consumers whereas the Chinese market prices for the majority of consumers by using agressive government subsidies.
Some have speculated that this is so they can price out the competition as these subsidies are unsustainable, but I'm frankly not qualified to examine it.