Only a few days have passed into the year 2025 and electric vehicles are already experiencing a roller coaster ride. Last week, Tesla kicked off this bumpy ride by reporting that, for the first time, the reigning American electric vehicle champion had delivered fewer cars worldwide than the previous year. The automaker delivered 1,789 million vehicles in 2024, 1.1% less than the 1,808 million delivered in 2023. Tesla shares plummeted 8% after the news.
More annual sales figures emerged on Friday, and the story for electric vehicles became more rosy. General Motors said it sold 50% more electric vehicles than last year, with its Chevrolet Equinox EV SUV leading the way. Honda’s Prologue EV, which went on sale mid-year, sold 33,000 units, marking a huge success for the Japanese brand’s U.S. debut. Even Ford, which last year said it would abandon its plan From increasing sales of all-electric vehicles in favor of a mix of EVs, hybrids and gasoline cars, it sold more than 50,000 Mustang Mach-Es.
Global EV sales figures likely won’t be known until next month, but analysts say that in the United States, EVs appear on track to reach a reasonable 8% of total auto sales by 2024. .
Maybe “roller coaster” is a bit dramatic. In many ways, the story of electric vehicle sales (and even the Tesla subplot) is playing out just as the entire industry thought. In the early part of the decade, “people thought electric vehicles would grow like a hockey stick,” says Stephanie Brinley, senior automotive analyst at S&P Global Mobility, “but it wasn’t realistic. The way we’re seeing them evolve the market is more realistic.”
“Everyone is still moving slowly,” says Corey Cantor, senior associate covering electric vehicles at BloombergNEF, of electric vehicles and their manufacturers.
lukewarm optimism
No one said the transition to electric vehicles would be easy. Electrification “has been one of the biggest changes the auto industry has seen, and the auto industry doesn’t change overnight,” says Ivan Drury, director of analytics at Edmunds, the automotive website.
Making an entirely new powertrain and finding the mineral batteries to power it is only half the challenge. Changing people’s purchasing habits, especially for one of the most expensive purchases of their lives, will be the other half. Given these limitations, “it’s surprising that we’ve seen so much change,” Drury notes.
Even Tesla’s slump can be seen as proof that Elon Musk’s maker is doing something good. In 2006, Musk published his “Master plan“, which stated Tesla’s “general purpose”: “to help accelerate the shift from a mine-and-flare hydrocarbon economy to a solar electric economy, which I believe is the primary, but not the only, sustainable solution.” Tesla’s annual growth problems are due, in part, to the fact that the tactic worked and there is now much more global competition in the electric vehicle sector. Tesla officially lost its title as the world’s leading EV manufacturer last year to the. china BYD, which produced some 4,500 more electric vehicles last year (Tesla continued to sell more EVs, with the important help of Chinese buyers, who purchased 8.8% more EVs from the manufacturer last year than in 2023).
Whether the global vehicle electrification project moves forward depends, in part, on politics. In the United States, EV sales skyrocketed in the last quarter of the year. This is perhaps because consumers learned of the new Trump administration’s plans to eliminate incentives for electric vehicles and followed experts’ advice to buy new cars while they could still get subsidies. What will happen in 2025 if these purchase incentives disappear?
In the absence of knowing more sales figures, those for 2024 seem to show a sector that is advancing as it should: “It’s a crazy transition,” says Brinley, the analyst, about the change to electric vehicles. But she is confident: “We are going to see greater adoption,” she concludes.
Article originally published in WIRED. Adapted by Mauricio Serfatty Godoy.
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