How Is KR 1.2 Tracking?
Passenger vehicles account for roughly half of transport emissions. Global EV adoption is steadily gaining, with sales jumping from less than 3 percent of new passenger cars in 2019 to 24 percent in 2024. Batteries are getting cheaper and more efficient by the year. Five million public charging points are up and running. By the end of this calendar year, nearly 80 million electric vehicles should be on the road worldwide.
While this is all great news, we can’t afford to be complacent. Over the last two years, sales growth for EVs has slowed worldwide. In such crucial markets as India, Japan, and Brazil, the market share remains stuck under 5 percent. To sustain momentum and reach a 50 percent global share by 2030, we’ll need an ambitious leap in manufacturing, from around 17 million EVs per year to 40 million or more.
Even with automakers investing heavily in electrification, we won’t hit this target without aggressive financial incentives to spur consumers to switch.
In some places, public policy is creating the future we need. In 2024, in Norway, nearly nine of ten new passenger car sales were EVs. In China, despite an economic downturn and signs of market saturation, it was nearly two of three–a big advance for the world’s largest auto market. Nearly 40 countries have committed to complete phaseouts of gas-powered new car sales by 2040.
By any measure, this marks tremendous progress. But to reach our targets, we’ll need to accelerate global EV adoption–especially in Europe and the United States, where Volkswagen, GM, Ford, and other legacy stalwarts are struggling to make EVs that are both profitable and popular. In the U.S., Tesla’s home base, electric vehicles captured just 10 percent of the new car market as of 2024. We won’t stay on track with our 2040 goal–95 percent of new car sales–if automakers keep deferring their transition to a zero-emissions industry.