Posted : 2023-06-24 23:26:50

Electrifying the Future: A Deep Dive into the Booming EV Market

Electric vehicles have been in the news very often recently due to a surge in their popularity and the different advantages they provide over gas-powered cars. Cesta’s data visualization and statisticians team strives to explore publicly available data every week and as such, this week we explored publicly available data regarding Electric Vehicle sales across 36 countries. We aim to continue showcasing our expertise in different analytical tools, including SAS, R & Tableau on popular topics.

We focused on the Electric Vehicle (EV) sales across 36 countries including 16 developed countries and 20 developing countries. The specific focus was on battery-operated electric vehicles (BEVs) and the annual sales were available starting from the early 2010s to 2022 for all the countries. After the data analysis, we noticed the following trends in EV sales:

The years from 2010-2014 were the first phase where electric vehicles just came into the market and their sales were very low and stagnant.

The years from 2015-2017 saw a rise in the sale of electric vehicles with a noticeable increase in sales and an upward trajectory in almost all countries.

The years from 2018-2022 saw an exponential rise in the sale of electric vehicles with sales surging to massive highs in 2022 for almost all the countries.

From R:

From SAS:

Here are some of the other trends that were noticed and some explanations for the same:

Developing countries save a bigger spike from 2018-22: The primary reason for this is the difference in the population size and the demographics of the developing countries as compared to the developed ones. Developing countries are adopting electric vehicles faster as they lead to a smaller carbon footprint, less dependence on fossil fuels and cleaner air.

6 countries constantly account for ~90% of the EV sales in developed countries: These 6 countries are either the countries that have large populations like the United States of America or Japan or else have an extremely private vehicle-dependent transportation structure.

China leads the surge for electric vehicles in recent years: The primary contributor to the spike is China which has seen a rapid increase in not just the number of electric vehicles sold but also in its share of the global sale of electric vehicles.

Western world relatively constant: The Western world has been relatively constant when it comes to the sale of electric vehicles. It has not seen as exponential a spike as the developing countries have done. While Western Europe’s share in global sales dropped as global sales spiked, the United States of America’s shares have been relatively constant throughout the whole period.

From Tablu:

From Exel:

Overall, the trends in sales of EV cars are complex and multifaceted. There are multiple reasons why the sales of electric vehicles have spiked in recent years and additional research will help us to understand better the factors contributing to these trends and using them to promote the sale of electric vehicles.