Welcome to the 8th Annual Top 10 EV Countries list! (as well as a revival of Daily Kos EV Tuesday… on Wednesday, heh)
Sigh. Nowadays there’s always chance for breaking bad news to overshadow any substantive in-depth story. The story below is mostly good news, so I hope it is well received right now. This is a long post, but hopefully engaging and encouraging. Feel free to bookmark for later and read by parts.
This is the latest into the new year that I’ve posted the Top 10. It’s been a very crazy January-April for me. I’ve also done more research than ever to put this together. Link to the 2020 list (from there you can get to older ones).
What a wall-buster year it’s been for EVs!
- 6.75 million new electric cars and vans on the road, 8.3% of total global auto sales, doubling 2020’s EV market share. Since cars last 12-20 years on average, and since auto sales are generally down right now, crossing 8% means that the active global ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) fleet may already be shrinking quite a bit, and will only shrink further from here — great news for the planet.
- 2021 marksthe first year when EVs surged around the globe, and across all automotive segments, rather than move forward in some regions and segments and stagnate or retreat in others.
- Europe, which together with China and the US accounts for >2/3 of global auto sales, completed two back-to-back years of meteoric rise, on the wings of tough EU automaker emission penalties and (mostly) smart green pandemic-recovery subsidies. In 2021, 8 European countries saw >20% EV market share — including for the 1st time Germany, the continent’s biggest market. 6 additional countries — as well as the continent as a whole— cleared 15%. And yet, a couple of countries elsewhere managed to overshadow Europe’s growth. Which countries? Read to the end to learn!
- Not only has an EV model crossed half a million sales in a single year for the first time ever — two others exceeded 400k sales right behind it! And all three are BEVs (“pure electric”), pounding the final nail into the conventional wisdom (still encountered sometimes in silly articles) that to get meaningful EV adoption, PHEVs (plug-in hybrids) must be front and center with BEVs relegated to a “niche”. Turns out that “wisdom” is precisely backwards.
- There are other major good news which I’m saving here as a surprise, to be revealed when the relevant Top 10 country comes up.
We should have gotten to this point in global EV progress earlier, and saving the climate needs us to move even faster. But at least we’re finally moving at something resembling the required pace.
DISCLAIMERS AND CREDITS
- Like most reasonable sources I count both BEVs+PHEVs in the EV total (although there’s some bonus points for getting more BEVs).
- The score is multi-faceted rather than representing solely consumer sales. This is a global challenge, to which different countries can contribute in different ways, and the big picture must be in view. Advantage goes to countries that contribute in multiple ways. There’s also lots of bonus for rate-of-improvement over 2020. I tweak the point system a bit every year to keep up with the rapidly changing EV scene, so points are not quite comparable year-to-year. They are comparable between countries in a given year, of course.
- The lion’s share of credit for source data goes as usual, to Jose Pontes, who in 2021 decided to hop from his EV Sales Blog to posting similar summaries on Cleantechnica, which has become the go-to place for EVs and other environmental-tech topics. For data geeks, Jose et al.’s Europe output is more conveniently available at the official EU-sanctioned eafo.eu. If you want to drown in EV numbers and analyses from around the globe, do subscribe to Jose’s new commercial endeavor EV Volumes (and no, I’m not getting a cut).
- Some numbers in Europe may look different from what you see elsewhere, because I’ve added light-commercial vehicle sales to numerator and denominator, to make the comparison with other regions equitable (in terms of prevalence and usage, European light vans are roughly equivalent to US pickup trucks — but unlike the latter, too often they are counted separately).
Ok, go over the fold if you dare…
8th-10th place, 52 points: 3-way tie! Finland (1st appearance), Netherlands (5th in 2020), denmark (1st appearance)
This year’s Top 10 include all 5 Scandinavian nations, which also happen to be 2021’s top 5 countries for EV sales market share. The Norwegian Spirit has now diffused to the entire region! Finland and Denmark both nearly doubled their EV share last year, reaching 29.5% and 27% EV sales share respectively. They both also dramatically increased new electric bus deployment to ~200 each, representing 50% and 34% shares of that segment. Even though they haven’t contributed to EV or battery production yet, in current terms this is Top-10 worthy performance. Finland grabbed some headlines and internet-troll traffic in late 2021, with a proposal to balance EV’s lopsided gender composition by offering women incentives to buy them. Not sure where that idea went from there.
Netherlands, OTOH, is a Top 10 veteran and also one of the most volatile. Its government keeps wildly experimenting with incentive policies, jolting the market hither and thither. In 2021 a subsidy drop made Netherlands the slowest-rising Western European market, improving only 16% (from 22% to 25.4%). However, Netherlands has a solid EV culture with one of the most advanced quick-charging networks. It continues to lead the continent in EV bus share (55% last year) and also has one of Europe’s leading electric bus makers, VDL, which despite a flat year still contributed its bit.
7th place, 54 points: U-S-A! (off the top 10 in 2020)
Last year the Trump-induced flatlining of America’s EV action for anything not named Tesla, tossed the US way off the Top 10, for a shameful first time ever. What a difference a year makes! Signs of life shown by the Detroit 3, mostly the Mustang Mach-E thus far, and renewed consumer interest, nearly doubled plug-in sales to just over 600k and a 4.1% market share, which is respectable…. for 2019 maybe. The US has by far the lowest EV share in the Top 10; you have to go all the way down to #20 Poland to find a lower share.
Tesla is the only reason the US is anywhere near the Top 10. Shitty Elon Musk aside, Tesla had another year for the history books. Its massive footprint as the world’s #1 EV maker gives the US global 2nd place in production points earned. Model 3 continued to rule the global sales chart for a record 4th straight year, and even crossed half-million sales in 2021, with much of that coming from the new Shanghai factory. And the Model Y which only debuted in 2020, crossed 400k sales in 2021, grabbing a global EV Gold-Bronze duo for Tesla.
The US scene could have been even a bit better last year if not for those disheartening Bolt battery recalls. Stuff happens with a new technology — but the fact it took more than a half-year for GM to reopen the Bolt production lines suggests that they still see EVs as a very lower-tier priority. Could you imagine the Silverado line closed for anywhere near that duration over a recall? Overall, last year EVs were maybe, maybe barely 1% of the Big 3’s production output.
No, until further notice the US Big 3 will continue to have to be dragged into EVs kicking, screaming, whining, snoozing, and saying really stupid things all at once. And likewise for their dealers, for most of the US media, and for the ~30% of Americans who think EVs are some Librul Lizard People plot that their Supreme Court majority ought to strike down somehow.
Still, it’s good to be back in the running, and with a competent Federal stewardship that’s pouring resources into EV infrastructure.
6th place, 56 points: iceland (no change)
My scores try to balance between absolute and relative scales of progress and avoid giving any country an “easy win” thank to say, super-small population — but really, when the global average EV sales share is still single-digit and you’re improving from 47% to 65%, it’s hard to justify keeping you off the Top 10.
Iceland’s 2021 wild card was light-commercial (think: delivery van) EV market share, which jumped from 8% to 21%— world’s highest unless I’m mistaken — and all of them BEVs.
5th place, 58 points: Germany (tie-3rd in 2020)
The fact Germany slid 1.5 places down despite having a very decent 2021, demonstrates what a dizzying EV year it was (and it continues into 2022, touch wood).
Domestic EV sales share did — guess what? — right kids, nearly doubled— to 24%, keeping Germany for another year ahead of the US in EV sales total (690k to 608k). Germany also managed to grab Europe’s light-commercial volume lead from France, with >16k deployments in that segment.
The Volkswagen group continued its increasingly earnest Make Amends for Dieselgate process, putting >750k EVs on global roads last year, good for world’s #2 and nearly doubling 2020. The I.D.4 SUV pictured above became the first German EV to cross 100k sales in a year, breaking the Renault Zoe’s European EV sales record set in 2020. It also attained VW’s highest annual global sales position at #4. It’s produced in Germany, China, and soon also the US. As to this year, despite war- and Covid-related disruption to both factories, VW still scored a record 2022 opening quarter on BEVs, almost reaching 100k (Q1 is traditionally the weakest in the EV calendar).
Unfortunately, the other two German makers — BMW and Daimler-Mercedes-Benz — are holding Germany back now. While putting out decent numbers on paper, most of these are fairly minimal-range PHEVs, just enough to avoid being stung by EU policies. They also haven’t ramped up at the same pace as the leading packs. According to Jose’s EV Volumes (login-walled, you can sign up for free), the two had the slowest 2021 growth rate among the top 20 EV makers, except for the struggling Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance.
Germany may have also beat France for another segment’s continental volume title: new EV buses, reaching 550-600 in 2021, good for ~10% share of its domestic bus market. And Mercedes and MAN finally showed some production results in that segment, although still not enough to reach even 500 combined. But overall, Germany is getting into full EV gear and will hopefully keep up and even accelerate the pace in 2022.
4th place, 59 points: Sweden (tie-3rd in 2020)
Perennial Top 10 dweller and regional runner-up to Norway, Sweden did its part in 2021. EV share rose from 30% to 42% and continued the transition from PHEV-dominated to more balanced. Volvo cars as part of the conglomerate of its Chinese owner Geely, continued rising, and while still PHEV-dominated is starting mixing it up with BEVs. Geely-Volvo even made the global Top 5 in December.
Volvo Bus (the bus-truck division is separate and still Swedish-owned) had a flat EV year, but Volvo Trucks had a breakout 2021, deploying ~150 heavy-duty BEV trucks, firmly in the continent’s top spot for this climate-critical and still-behind segment.
But if last year’s Bronze winners are already spoken for — who managed to hop-skip past them?!
3rd place, 62 points: south korea (8th in 2020)
Years ago, the Korean industry — both automakers and battery makers — saw the EV writing on the wall, and did what Koreans do: Work Hard and Be Practical. The results are now bearing fruit and South Korea gets its first medal. My all-important virtual medals aside, Koreans have attained a strategic global position in the EV scene.
Domestic sales are still not at European levels, but EV share did jump from <3% to >7% last year, and total EV sales pushed Korea into the >100k club. Unlike Europe where the crucial and (arguably) no-brainer light-commercial segment lags behind, in Korea the best selling EV in 2021 was in fact a light truck. And as the picture above shows, these aren’t your leisure drive-to-the-mall “trucks” of the American market, but genuine workhorses. The surge in e-truck sales is apparently driven by tough restrictions and fees imposed on ICE trucks.
Most EVs made by the Hyundai-Kia conglomerate, >300k of them last year, get exported. But Korea’s biggest EV footprint is in batteries. 3 Korean firms are responsible for >30% of global battery capacity in EVs sold last year, making Korea second only to China. Looking ahead, take Europe: all the noise is about Tesla’s German Gigafactory, but meanwhile the Korean companies got on the ground first and are already producing: Samsung and SK Innovations in Hungary, and LG in Poland, with combined output that will continue to dwarf Tesla’s. Even in the US where Tesla dominates production right now, two Korean-company factories (combined) are slated to exceed it by 2024. Tesla itself depends on LG batteries for some of its China production.
Last but not least, Korea’s electric bus market is likely 2nd-largest in the world by volume, with 1275 deployed in 2021 (up from ~1000 in 2020) amid fierce competition between local and Chinese bus makers. That’s almost 40% of how many e-buses the entire continent of Europe deployed last year.
2nd place, 65 points: Norway (1st in 2020)
In this country-sized lab for the EV revolution, 2021’s market share stopped a hair short of 75% (up from 63% in 2020). It was actually 86% for cars, but light-commercial with only 17% pulled the overall average down. Light-commercial share was however double 2020’s 8.5% and year-to-date 2022 is at 27%, so this gap will close, hopefully soon. The EV share of Norway’s active fleet is already well over 20%, even more in the main metro areas. I’ve been told that many gas stations have already converted to gas-and-charging. Electric buses had a relatively slow year in Norway for whatever reason.
Norway managed to squeak past China to win #1 in 2020, but it’s unlikely to happen again soon unless some production-related action starts there, at the very least on batteries or battery recycling. Oh, and there you go! Indeed it is happening.
1st place, 87 points(!): China (2nd in 2020)
In 2020 due to Covid and other stuff, China lost a beat and fell to a rare 2nd place (it’s been #1 in 2015-2019). How did China open up such a huge margin only a year later?
(quick numbers run-up: ~3.4 million EV car+van sales, roughly half the global total with a ~15% EV market share, up 140% over 2020).
Say what you will about China’s dictatorship and the pain it perpetrates, China’s industry knows how to move fast in the right direction, like no other on the planet. While the self-indulgent West talks, and “tests, and pilots”, walks back and then forward again, and finds excuses to delay — China just goes and does. And again — say what you will on other stuff — this has been put into excellent use on cleantech, time and again.
We saw it with solar and wind. We saw it with electric buses and with the evolution of a broad and robust EV industry. The same pattern of the West talking a good talk and taking decades to walk the walk, while China (and possibly also Korea sometimes) just goes and does, is repeating with lithium battery recycling.
So… what happened in 2021 on top of all that?
- Everyone talks about EV affordability, but most Western automakers prefer to try and compete with Tesla (and lose) in the lucrative upmarket. Meanwhile, Chinese product designers and engineers figured out how to make true EV for the masses. I wrote about it here shortly after it appeared: The Wuling Hong Guang Mini EV(which besides other records, might have also broken the name-length-to-size record). With 4 seats and prices starting ~$4k, the WHGMiniEV has led China’s monthly EV sales almost continuously since appearing. 2021 was its first full year on the market, and it clocked in at 424k sales, leaving the Model 3 (169k in China) and Y (151k) far behind. With these kind of numbers, it also managed to win #2 in the overall Chinese auto market behind the Nissan Sylphy. Now everyone’s waiting to see how and where it will start invading other countries! A weird rebadged version appeared in Lithuania of all places, but hasn’t gotten traction. More likely, the automaker itself will make an organized export or co-production push somewhere soon. By the way, a new affordable hit in the European EV market is the Dacia Spring. The brand is Romanian, the HQ in France (Renault) — but guess who actually makes it?
- More generally, Chinese automakers and automotive production workers upped their EV game massively in 2021. The top 10 *global* best-selling EVs were all produced in China (either solely or as a major production site). China’s auto market has long been dominated by Japanese and Western Big Auto co-producing locally. But now this is changing because most of the former have been snoozing on EVs, and the market’s electrification is led by local companies, whose share of overall auto sales rose from 40% to 49% last year. With this kind of ramp-up, Chinese EVs are also starting to show up overseas: China exported a half-million EVs last year. This included all the Teslas reaching Europe, but also Chinese-owned brands designed for export such as Polestar, Lynk and Co, and MG. China produced nearly 60% of the world’s EVs last year., and the normalized EV production share of its total car-production output was ~20%, among the world’s highest. China continues to be the only auto market where one can find an EV for pretty much every segment, budget, and taste.
- And that’s nothing compared to batteries, the one ingredient absolutely essential for going electric. Once again, Tesla branded Gigafactories suck all the air out of the media attention room, but meanwhile 79% of the world’s installed battery-production capacity is in China, most of it under Chinese brands let by CATL, the world’s #1. In 2021 China added ~200GWh capacity — that’s more than what the entire world put together has installed in 2021 *and* all prior years.
- Last and certainly not least, the final EV frontier: heavy trucks. There was not much to score on electric trucks until now (except for Tesla as usual wowing the media back in 2017, promising to deliver its first Semis in 2020; not quite on the horizon yet). According to CALSTART’s meticulous recent report, in the entire US at the end of 2021 there were 47 heavy-duty electric trucks and 19 garbage trucks. That’s <0.001% of our active fleet. The European scene is somewhat better, seeing 300-400 new heavy trucks deployed in 2021 (although this might include medium-duty as well). Enter China, center stage: in 2021, China’s new heavy-duty EV truck deployment jumped 4x — from 2600 to >10,400. It’s the electric bus story all over again. And indeed, among the main players in this new e-truck scene is Yutong, China’s lesser-internationally-known #1 e-bus maker. Lei Xing, the author of the truck summary, predicts a doubling in 2022.
Big Oil’s fallback strategy now that the consumer auto market is getting overrun by EVs and governments are tightening the screws on ICE phaseout, has been Trucks and Plastics. Supposedly, they try to delude investors and the world, the oil consumption for these will rise and rise so Big Oil will continue to thrive till we all die. Trucks in particular occupy a huge CO2 footprint. Now that China is showing that e-trucks are already viable at scale, hopefully others will follow and more quickly than they’ve done on buses.
epilogue: also-rans and tidbits
- Two new faces in the Top 10 means 2 old faces out: this year the unlucky ones are France (11th) and the UK (12th). Both still had a decent 2021 in absolute terms, their EV shares rising 59% and 76% to 15% and 16%, respectively. But France’s Renault didn’t keep up with the rapid progress, and England’s main auto plant is Nissan’s, whose Leaf also lost ground while seeking 2nd life as a downmarket alternative. Both countries might stage a comeback though.
- Every story needs a villain, and ours is doubtlessly Japan. Its vaunted automakers control the worldwide annual production of ~25 million cars and light trucks, far more than any other country’s auto industry. In 2021, how many of these were EVs? Maybe 200k, possibly less. That’s not even weak; it’s criminal negligence. If you add on the laggard US Big 3, that’s roughly half the world’s light-vehicle production with a combined <1% EV share. A literal dead weight that the other half has to drag up the steep rocky hill of climate mitigation. While Japan’s domestic market showed initial signs of life last year, this only meant a 1.4% EV share (doubling last year, of course). A very long way to go.
- Lastly, another automotive and population giant: India. India’s road to electrification has been slower, but also different: leading the charge are those pesky 3-wheel taxis. Officially >150k E-3-wheelers were deployed in 2021; but last year an Indian EV researcher told me there are so many more grassroots, improvised 3-wheel e-conversions happening all over the place and not captured by the stats. As to 4 wheelers, only now they’re starting for real with ~15k registered in 2021. Electric buses had their de-facto Year 1 in India with just over 1000, after almost nothing in prior years.