[Dormant] Electric Vehicles

Sometimes reading the stats is not enough. I like to see for myself. So, we went to China. We had been looking forward to cruising the Yangtze River upstream from the Three Gorges Dam and thought it an opportune time to see what “53% of new cars sales in China are plugins” looked like in the flesh — so to speak. The short answer is: spectacular! “What do all the green number plates mean?” the tour guide was asked repeatedly by our group. “Green number plates means the car is electric!”

We had been in China 8 years ago, and the transformation since then has been dramatic. The country is much wealthier. We landed in Chengdu (a city of over 25 million) and were immediately impressed by the fact that most cars on the road were less than 5 years old. (The Chinese government is giving incentives to update to cleaner, newer cars. I wonder where all the old ones went? Scrap metal by the looks of it.) Gone were the human-powered vehicles and the three-wheeled, smoke-spewing rickshaws. There were even fewer motor scooters — and the ones that were on the road were — you guessed it — electric.

I am a gas car fan, but not in the normal way. Most self-described combustion aficionados mean they've owned a few fun cars, maybe wrenched on one or two and usually kept up with whatever's on the cover of the magazines. But I went a little further into that world. I didn't own a few cars. I owned 13 gas-burners over the course of 5 years, almost all of them old and beaten up. I didn't just read the magazines, I built my life around working for one, then became the reviews editor at Road & Track. But when I got the call to work at InsideEVs, I knew it was time to take a step into the future.

I leased a new EV. It's a 2024 Chevy Blazer EV, and I love it. Let me explain why.

Its powertrain is quieter than the smoothest BMW inline-six. It rides beautifully because it isn't trying to be a sports car or a truck. And the technology I've derided as a built-to-last enthusiast turns out to be quite charming in my day to day life. Sure, no screens and a double-din stereo would be more repairable. But it's ok to admit that I like having Google Maps and Spotify built in to my car. I love having a 360-degree camera and a power tailgate. I love knowing I have modern-car safety, with potential life savers like automatic braking with pedestrian detection. The curmudgeon in me wants to complain that humans should be able to drive without electronic aids, but a hundred years of experimenting with that has lead to a lot of deaths.

I love that my car doesn't need to be turned on or off. Like every electronic in my life, it knows to turn itself on when I start using it, and turn itself off when I walk away. I love that it still has overrides to keep it on, or force it off. I love that I can heat up the cabin without waiting 15 minutes for the engine to warm up, regardless of whether I'm driving or using remote start. I love one-pedal driving, and the feeling of a 1-to-1 relationship between my right foot and the rate of acceleration. There's no delay, no waiting for a dawdling transmission to downshift.

Most of all, I love the feeling of driving it at night. I love zooming unto a dark highway, without noise or drama, blasting into the night lit by nothing but LED headlights. I love that moment where there's a quick break in traffic, and one quick press of the throttle rockets me forward with more immediacy than the best internal combustion car can manage. And I love that I can enjoy all of this without any tailpipe emissions.

Adapter will go on sale via dealers at that point, although from what I read any 3rd party adapter (cheaper and available now) will work as well.

Some 295,000 plugin vehicles were registered in Europe in September, rising 6% YoY, which represents the EV market’s return to growth for the first time since April. This is even more significant when you consider the overall market fell by 4%, to 1.1 million units.

Interestingly, BEVs are the ones pushing the market upwards, growing 14% YoY to 212,000 units. PHEVs remain stuck in red, falling 9% in September to 83,000 units.

Looking at the remaining powertrains, only HEVs were positive, growing 12% YoY, while petrol was down 19% and diesel continued to free fall, dropping 24%.

As such, September’s automotive market has seen some seismic changes, with plugin vehicle share of the overall European auto market rising to 26% (19% full electrics/BEVs). Added to the 34% market share of HEVs, that means that 60% of all passenger cars sold in Europe last September had some kind of electrification.

Even more importantly, for the first time, sales of HEVs (34% share) surpassed sales of petrol vehicles (29% share) in September, a trend that is surely here to stay. Meanwhile, diesel (8%) continues to lose relevance every passing day. At this pace, I wouldn’t be surprised if diesel was dead in Europe before 2030, with petrol following it a couple of years later.

These results kept the 2024 plugin vehicle share at 22% (15% for BEVs alone) through the end of September, which is only 1% less than where we were a year ago, at 23%.

Finally, looking at the sales breakdown between BEVs and PHEVs, despite the good result for pure electrics in September, they represented 72% of all plugin sales, and they are at exactly at the same level in 2024 as they were a year ago (67%). With new or refreshed models landing soon for both powertrains — namely, cheaper BEVs and longer range PHEVs — and new CO2 ceilings in Europe, it will be interesting to see how the two technologies behave next year.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/46194795