I was also in Vietnam recently, in Saigon there were many...

I was also in Vietnam recently, in Saigon there were many electric vehicle, especially taxis as someone else mentioned, as well as a reasonable number of electric motorcycles. In the smaller towns there were fewer electric vehicles to be seen. The previous time I was in Vietnam was about four years ago and you'd hardly see a single EV if you went searching.

I was also in Laos (a landlocked country between China, Vietnam, Thailand and others for those who don't know). Obviously as a very poor country without much of a population, Laos itself is never going to be a big part of the global vehicle market, but it was very interesting to see a large percentage of the motorcycles on the road being EVs even in the small towns and villages. I saw basically no electric cars outside the capital, probably partly due to a mixture of poverty and lack of charging infrastructure, but within the capital city they were quite common and a couple of my friends there had recently bought them. New vehicle sales are very heavy on the EVs in the capital, and there were more new electric motorcycles than liquid-fueled ones available both in the city and the smaller towns (I've never seen new cars being sold in Laos outside the capital). Again, it was about four years since I was previously in Laos, and back then I didn't see a single EV. While Laos itself isn't a relevant part of the market, the fact that such a poor country with incredibly poor infrastructure is rapidly moving to EVs shows that it's possible for it to happen anywhere. I suppose one thing helping in Laos is that they produce a large amount of hydroelectricity (one of their few exports other than beer) which makes running EVs a particularly cheap option there.

I was also recently in Thailand, I met up with a friend there who had just bought a new MG EV, and we took a road trip across the north of Thailand. It was actually my first time driving an EV, and driving thousands of kilometres in an EV less than a month old was a great first experience, and a long distance drive over several days was great for experiencing the realities of the charging infrastructure, which to be honest I can't speak too highly of, though there are still few EVs in Thailand and they're still sorting out the teething issues in Thai style (things don't generally happen quickly and very little gets done well other than the food, and nothing new ever, ever gets done quickly and well). The charging stations were few and far between, we had to take significant detours to get to them and plan the trip carefully to make sure we didn't end up stranded. In one case the chargers were out of order, in one case the charger glitched and didn't record that the vehicle had been disconnected resulting in the bill continuing to increase after we left, and customer support didn't answer and wasn't going to be available until the following Monday, and sometimes we had to wait for other vehicles to finish charging, or when they were booked by others (they were scarce enough that you generally booked a time to charge your car) and didn't show up we had to wait. The best part was the cost, it was near enough to free. Electricity is very cheap in Thailand and charging a car cost comically little, the equivalent of a full tank cost a fraction of the price of the coffee we drank while waiting for the charge, even at Thai prices. For comparison, petrol costs almost as much there as in Australia.

I've thrown in a picture of a motocycle dealer in a small town in southern Laos (many of them only had electric bikes, and yeah, modest as those models are, they're all electric and they're what people are rapidly switching to), and a couple of pictures from the capital city which gives you an idea about the state of the grid powering these vehicles - if a place with that sort of infrastructure and economy can rapidly convert to EVs, it seems achievable across the world.

I'll probably be heading to India in the near future, I haven't been there for about six years, it'll be interesting to see if EVs have taken off as much there as in South East Asia.