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.
This was the best-selling car in the world last year. It'll probably be the best-selling car in the world this year, too.
A Goldman Sachs Intelligence Report used similar framing in its headline: “Why Are EV Sales Slowing?” I’ll answer that one: They aren’t. Maybe “Intelligence Report” is a misnomer. The report itself uses more technically correct language—saying “momentum for electric vehicles is slowing”—but puts the lawyered-up language next to a scary looking double-axis chart. Whether you look at the bar chart or the trend line, signs point to down. Dig deeper and you’ll see that, once again, sales slowed in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the last quarter of 2023. Year-over-year, January EV sales set yet another record.
By the close of the second quarter, total U.S. EV sales were up 7.3%, more than the overall auto market. But even that number hides the real gains. Tesla is dragging down the industry average, with aging vehicles and a CEO that seems eager to alienate anyone with a brain or heart. Exclude Tesla and EV sales were up 33% year-over-year for the first half of 2024.
Anyone who calls 33 or even 7% growth a “stall” is either ignorant of how large businesses grow or purposely misleading you.
I’d bet the myth stems from someone who falls into the latter group. Many people are politically or economically opposed to EV sales. Or, in the case of large car dealers, both. Dealerships make roughly half their money servicing internal-combustion vehicles, and many don’t want to sell vehicles that require far less maintenance. At a Ford dealership I visited last month, there was a big sign next to the F-150 Lightning saying “LOSES 30% OF ITS RANGE IN THE COLD.” There were no other signs explaining the low cost of ownership, or the new access to Tesla Superchargers. The disclaimer could be accurate, but it’d hardly your opening line if you wanted to actually sell cars.
This year has also seen the launch of more affordable options, like the Chevy Equinox EV. General Motors is unsurprisingly recording record EV sales, even after discontinuing its most popular model, the Bolt.
Of course, dealers and critics do have a legitimate reason to question the current EV sales boom. Manufacturers are offering heavy incentives on EVs, with dealer discounts piling atop them to move slow-selling inventory. Tax credits drive the prices down further. So we shouldn’t be surprised that cars sold for less than they cost to make are doing well.
That’s absolutely true, which is why I’m not arguing that EV economics are solved. Most companies still lose money. Most governments worldwide still offer some sort of subsidy. And many, many EVs are uncompetitve and unattractive to consumers. Cash on the hood of a Mercedes EQE doesn’t mean EVs are a dead-end technology. It means no one wants to pay $90,000 for a bedazzled egg.
The EQE 500 starts around $86,000. It's no wonder why they have to throw some cash on the hood to move units.
Most of all, it’s important to remember that these cars are fighting an uphill battle. Internal combustion has 100 years of institutional inertia backing it up. The supply chain that can get engines, transmissions, alternators and gasoline anywhere for cheap took decades to build. The industry had time to develop its sales model, its distribution pipeline and its unique selling points. And so has the fossil fuel industry that directly supports it.
General Motors’ board members and a former Tesla president Jon McNeil suspects that there’s more going on than is visible above the surface. “What we’ve been reading about are short-term dynamics, but they’re being twisted for political purposes by people that have business interests in fossil fuels,” McNeill told the news publication Semafor recently, also blaming energy-focused conglomerates like Koch Industries for orchestrating PR campaigns to sow doubt about EVs.
It’s easy to get conspiratorial without offering much proof, though the fact that this statement comes from a high-ranking GM officer speaks volumes. But what’s not in doubt is the science at work in our daily lives. The effects of climate change are already being felt at home and abroad. This summer’s heat is setting new records all over the country, and leaving people for dead in Arizona. Switching to electric cars won’t solve that overnight, but it’s the best option on the table for reducing carbon emissions now, keeping us from the most catastrophic outcomes.
