China Accounts for 60% of World EV Sales Now, And Why

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China has gone from about half of world electric car sales to 60% of world electric car sales. Or, actually, it started off well below 50% of world EV sales a handful of years ago. While China’s EV sales surged more than ever in 2024, the fact is this has been a long time in the making. We’re so used to tracking China’s EV market that we are accustomed to not bringing up the deeper history, but as CNN is just coming to the topic, it decided to go back a ways and actually did a good job explaining that 2024’s giant result stemmed from plans and groundwork laid more than a decade ago.

“Last year, China’s EV sales soared to 11 million, a nearly 40% increase on 2023, according to data from UK research firm Rho Motion. It’s an ‘irreversible transformation,’ Shuo said,” CNN writes. “China’s EV revolution helps cement its dominance in clean technology and its claim on global climate leadership, just as the Trump administration doubles down on planet-heating fossil fuels and demonizes clean energy.” Shuo is Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

“It is also shaking oil markets. Analysts predict oil demand may be peaking in China — flipping from increasing demand to declining — but the impacts go far wider. As the world’s biggest oil importer, what happens here has ripple effects across the global oil market,” CNN adds.

China is transforming the world’s auto markets and oil markets, and it is primed to take a big step driving most of the world forward on climate and away from the USA. But that’s about the future. I’ll come back to that. Let’s get back to looking backward.

I said that China laid the groundwork for this more than a decade ago, but CNN goes further and says “The roots of China’s EV surge go back nearly two decades.”

“Legacy automakers in the US, Japan and Europe had ‘such a big head start’ on gas-powered vehicles that it was unlikely China would ever catch up, Shuo said. EVs offered the chance to dominate a new market.

“There was also another key benefit: energy security.

“Unlike the fossil fuel-rich United States, China was built on imported oil. This reliance on other countries is a potential ‘geopolitical liability,’ said Ilaria Mazzocco, an expert in Chinese climate policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The advantage of EVs is that they can be powered by China’s plentiful supplies of homegrown electricity.”

We talk a lot these days about the US and Europe not wanting to be at the mercy of China when it comes to EV battery minerals. If we put ourselves in China’s perspective, indeed, the economic giant has been at the mercy of the US and oil dictatorships for many, many years. Of course it made a long-term plan to get out of our clutches.

Ilaria Mazzocco clarifies that it wasn’t really one decade ago or two when China started making its move. It was 16 years ago, in 2009. However, its initial subsidies fro manufacturers and R&D apparently didn’t get the desired results, and “it was considered kind of a failure.” The country’s leadership didn’t pack it in and give up, though. With years of consistent tweaking and modified incentives, things started to really click in the Chinese EV market.

BYD is an excellent example or case of how things have changed. Going from a very lame, handicapped, uninspiring e6 electric vehicle in the early days of its EV history, BYD now produces dozens of exciting, appealing, cost-competitive models of all shapes and sizes. It is by far the biggest producer of plugin vehicles in the world, and in the 4th quarter it took the title of best selling pure EV producer in the world. In 2025, frankly, it looks like BYD could run away with the title.

“Gasoline demand fell by about 1% in 2024 and is on course to fall faster this year, even as people’s incomes grow and car ownership rises, said Ciarán Healy, an oil market analyst at the International Energy Agency. […] Total oil demand may also be close to peaking. China’s crude oil imports fell nearly 2% in 2024, marking the first annual drop in two decades, except for during the Covid pandemic.” We’re at a crossover point. China is achieving what it set out to achieve. It’s weening itself off of oil. And, incidentally, looking at politics in the US and globally, it appears to be a perfect time for the country to take charge and take advantage of buffoonish behavior in the US. It can turn the tides of geopolitical power by assuming more control, offering more stability, and stimulating more progress on key matters as the US suffers from a cultural heart attack and abandons its allies — from the EU to Canada to Greenland to Panama.

The next 5–10 years are going to be interesting to watch, from many perspectives.