Electric cars, close to a new record: what the figures say about the future of cars

China and Europe lead most of the reception, while North America is the third largest source of supply.

The world will surpass another significant achievement in terms of electric vehicle reception: 20 million vehicles internationally in June. This is a wonderful development from just 1 million electric vehicles on the streets in 2016.

In the latter part of 2022, almost 1,000,000 electric vehicles per month will be added to the world fleet. That means about one every three seconds.

The pace of development is much faster than many car and oil companies expected just a few years ago. From BP’s point of view, for example, the organization expects a fleet of 71 million electric vehicles by 2035.

China accounts for 46% of total sales so far, followed by Europe with 34%. North America is a distant third, at 15%, but fresh policy support should drive the electric vehicle market this year and next. All the remaining countries together represent only 5% of the global fleet of electric vehicles.

The electric future

Most plug-in vehicles in the world are fully electric, but there are also 5.3 million plug-in hybrids. Plug-in hybrids have helped carmakers meet Europe’s increasingly stringent carbon reduction targets.

The adoption of electric vehicles in Japan – the largest car market after China, the USA and Europe – has been very slow. This is expected to change soon as Japanese carmakers launch new electric models. Nissan and Mitsubishi plan to launch electric models this year, followed by Honda in 2024 and subsidiary Toyota Daihatsu in 2025.

The next few years will bring remarkable progress in the adoption of electric vehicles, in fact, by the end of 2022, just over 2% of them will be electric. However, there is still a long way to go.