Global Electric Car Sales Nearly Triple in Three Years

Global electric car sales almost tripled over the past three years. They had previously doubled between 2020 and 2021, driven by registrations in China. Registrations of new electric vehicles reached 17.3 million last year, compared to just 6.5 million in 2021. That’s according to EV-volumes data cited by the International Energy Agency.

China continues to lead the growth in the electric car industry, with sales rising by more than 250 percent since 2021. Europe remains the second largest market for electric cars, with new registrations increasing by almost 40 percent in the past three years. In the United States, sales reached 1.5 million for the first time, but the overall market share of electric vehicles remains far below that of China and many European markets.

According to the IEA, China, Europe and the United States account for more than 90 percent of global electric car sales, illustrating that e-mobility isn’t advancing at the same pace globally. However, this could be changing soon. "Emerging markets in Asia and Latin America are becoming new centres of growth, with electric car sales jumping by over 60 percent in 2024 to almost 600,000 – about the size of the European market 5 years earlier. In Southeast Asia, electric car sales grew by nearly 50 percent to represent 9 percent of all car sales in the region", the IEA sums up, while citing ongoing affordability issues, questions around mineral availability and global trade unvertainty as challenges for the sector.

Note: An earlier version of this article cited the IEA as the source of the data when the data was really provided to the IEA by EV-volumes.com.