Tesla may be in a sales slump, but EVs are doing well overall

Just a few days in 2025, electric vehicles it’s already been a roller coaster ride of a year. Last week, Tesla began the bumpy ride when it said that, for the first time, the reigning champion of American EVs had delivered fewer cars worldwide than the previous year. The automaker delivered 1.789 million vehicles in 2024, a 1.1 percent drop compared to the 1.808 million delivered in 2023. Tesla stock prices sank 8 percent on the news.

Then, on Friday, more annual sales numbers emerged, and the EV story turned rosy around the edges. General Motors said it sold 50 percent more electric than last year, with its Chevrolet Equinox EV SUV leading the charge. Honda’s Prologue EV, which went on sale midway through the year, shifted 33,000 units — something of a coup for the Japanese manufacturer’s electric debut in the United States. As well Fordwho said last year it would be move away from his plan to scale up the sale of all electricity in favor of a mixture of EVs, hybrids and petrol cars, sold more than 50,000 Mustang Mach-Es.

Global EV sales numbers probably won’t be fully collected until next month, but analysts say that in the U.S., electric vehicles appear to be on track for a fairly reasonable 8 percent of all car sales. in 2024.

So maybe the “roller coaster” is a bit dramatic. By many measures, the EV sales story — and even Tesla’s subplot — is mostly playing out the way everyone in the industry thinks it will. In the early part of the decade, “people thought there would be crazy hockey stick growth for EVs,” says Stephanie Brinley, principal automotive analyst at S&P Global Mobility. “It was not realistic. The way we see the evolution of the market is more realistic.”

“Everyone continues to move forward slowly,” says Corey Cantor, a senior associate who covers electric vehicles at BloombergNEF, of electric cars and their manufacturers.

Tepid optimism

No one said the transition to electric vehicles would be easy. Electrification “has been one of the biggest changes the auto industry has ever seen — and the auto industry doesn’t change overnight,” says Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds. the automotive website.

Producing a new powertrain-and sourcing the minerals of the battery to energize – is only half the challenge. Changing people’s buying habits, especially for one of the most expensive purchases they will make in their lives, will be the other half. Given these limitations, “it’s remarkable that we’ve seen so much change,” says Drury.

Even Tesla’s hit on the road could be seen as evidence that CEO Elon Musk’s automaker is doing. something right. In 2006, Musk published his “Master Plan” which established the “general purpose” of Tesla: “to help accelerate the movement from a mining and burning hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy, which I believe is the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution”. Tesla’s annual growth challenges stem, in part, from the fact that the gambit has worked, and now there is much more global competition in the EV space. Tesla has officially lost its title as the number one EV manufacturer in the world last year at China BYD, which produced about 4,500 more electrics last year. (Tesla still sold more EVs, with a serious help from Chinese buyers, who bought 8.8 percent more of the automaker’s EVs last year than in 2023.)

Whether the global vehicle electrification project will stay on track depends, in part, on politics. In the United States, EV sales jumped in the last quarter of the year. This is perhaps because consumers have heard about the new Trump administration’s plans to remove incentives for electric vehicles and took expert advice to buy new cars when they could still get subsidies. What will happen in 2025 if those purchase incentives disappear?

Even with more sales numbers to come, the 2024 figures seem to show an industry that is catching up as it should. “It’s a crazy transition,” says Brinley, the analyst, of the shift to electric vehicles. But she is sure: “We will see more adoption,” she says.