You’ve heard it everywhere, or some variation of it. It’s never a contest claim, but an obvious truth, often leading into the meat of the sentence. “As EV growth stalls” or “In a market where consumers prefer hybrids to EVs.” The message is always clear: The EV revolution has burned out. Proceed to business as usual. There’s only one issue with that messaging: It is absolutely false. You’re being lied to.
EV sales aren’t stalling here. In a “down year,” where growth has been slower than expected, EV sales are handily outpacing conventional car sales growth, both at home and abroad. The revolution is in full swing. It might just take a bit longer than anticipated. But “slower than expected growth” and “stalled progress” aren’t synonymous. Stalling out rarely involves setting new records year after year. Yet somehow this narrative took root.
It’s hard to trace where this myth comes from. Like all powerful lies, there’s a kernel of truth in it. 2024 will not be the best year for the pace of EV sales growth, but a in much the same way that iPhone sales grew faster in 2009 than they did in 2013. There are fewer early EV adopters left to capture, and the holdouts are more price-conscious, tech-skeptical and slower to convert. Yet a slowing rate of sales growth and slowing sales aren’t the same thing, and sales of pure internal combustion engine vehicles have been in global decline since 2018. They continue their downward spiral this year, while EVs grow in many markets. Many of the headlines you’ve seen this year are flat-out false.
The misleading language spans the gamut of media outlets. “E.V. Sales Are Slowing. Tesla’s Are Slumping,” read a New York Times headline. The story itself notes first-quarter EV sales were actually up 2.3% year-over-year. The first quarter of 2024 was down compared to the last quarter of 2023, true, as every first quarter is down compared to every fourth quarter in the highly cyclical, end-of-year-closeout-driven automotive sales business. Ice cream sales had a rough winter, too. Time to buy puts on Ben & Jerry's.
