Introduction

The promise of massive adoption of EVs in the consumer market has been advertised for quite some time now, usually with little success. That is, until recently, when China seems to be dominating this segment of this technology.

In July 2024, for the first time ever, more Chinese people bought electric cars than gas cars.

Electric vehicles captured 52% of all new car sales that month, and the data shows that they haven’t looked back. By year-end, EVs held 51% of China’s entire passenger vehicle market.

This trend doesn’t seem to suggest a simple market share growth, but an inevitable displacement.

Let’s go back ten years to the past to 2015, when electric vehicles were a curiosity in China. Approximately, one in every 18 new cars sold were electric, or about 1.6% of the market. Expensive, limited range, questionable quality, in short, all the prices early adopters pay when it comes to adopt newer technologies.

Now let’s fast forward to 2024: one in every 2 cars sold is electric.

What happened in between? China didn’t just incentivize EVs, in fact, it took a more aggressive approach by making gasoline cars inconvenient, expensive, and increasingly irrational to buy.

The inflection point came around 2020-2021, where market share jumped from 6.8% to 16.4% in a single year. Then 25% in 2022. Then 31% in 2023. Then the tipping point in 2024: 51% as shown in the plot above.

This acceleration matches what researchers call a “technological S-curve”, a curve characterized by slow adoption, then explosive growth, and finally market saturation. China is currently in the explosive phase.

Adoption Meets Exponential Growth

So, we have observed that the market share numbers are dramatic, but how about the absolute volumes? This increment is even more impressive.

In 2015, China sold 331,000 electric vehicles, a respectable number (EV sales in the US for that same year were 54,000) but still very modest.

In 2024, China sold 11.2 million EVs which translates to a 34x increase in nine years!

To put that in perspective, China’s 2024 EV sales alone exceeded total global EV sales from just two years earlier (in 2022, global EV sales were ~10.2M). The country sold more EVs in 2024 than the entire world combined sold in 2022.

And unlike many markets where EV growth comes at the expense of total car sales, China’s absolute numbers show something different. Fuel-powered vehicle sales peaked in 2017 and have been declining since, replaced unit for unit, by electric vehicles.

In short, this isn’t a case of EVs expanding the pie. They’re not-so-slowly eating over the entire pie.

A New Challenger Approaches: The Rise of PHEV

Here’s where this data story gets interesting. While China’s overall EV numbers exploded, the composition shifted dramatically.

In 2020, 80% of EVs sold in China were pure battery-electric vehicles (BEVs). Plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) amounted for a mere 15%.

However, by 2024, BEVs experienced a drop to just 58% of the EV market, while PHEVs surged to 30% (plus another 12% in extended-range EVs).

What are some possible causes behind this shift? Perhaps the desire for pragmatism. Chinese consumers in smaller cities, where public charging infrastructure probably lags behind their super cities, prefer the flexibility of a plug-in hybrid. In doing so, consumers get the efficiency and electric driving for daily commutes, with gasoline as backup for longer trips.

This could also explain why EV adoption in general was accelerated so quickly after 2022. The proliferation and adoption of PHEVs removed what is probably the biggest barrier behind EVs: range anxiety. Once consumers could go electric without sacrificing flexibility, adoption curves steepened.

A Global Powerhouse

China doesn’t just dominate Asia’s EV market; it dominates the global one.

In 2024, China produced 12 million of the world’s 17 million EVs (70%), it sold 11.2 million domestically (66% of global sales), and it exported 1.25 million to 160 countries.

For added context: China’s EV sales in 2024 exceeded the combined totals of Europe (3.4M), the United States (1.5M), and the rest of the world (1M) combined.

And while European EV sales stagnated in 2024 (0% growth) and US sales grew modestly (10%), China’s market expanded 38% year-over-year.

This shows not only that the gap isn’t closing, but it’s also widening at a fast pace.

In short, no one can remotely compete with China right now when it comes to EV sales and production.

A Glance into the Future: Can China Become the New Norway?

We briefly covered the technological S-Curve before, and when markets cross the 50% threshold, history shows they don’t stop there.

Norway hit 50% EV market share in 2020. By 2024, they were at 90%. The tipping point accelerates adoption because infrastructure builds out, used EV markets mature, and social norms shift. In other words, the combination of government incentives, cheaper technology, mainstream adoption creates a snowball effect.

If China follows Norway’s trajectory, and data seems to suggest it will, we can expect 80-85% EV market share by 2027-2028.

That would mean that 18-20 million EVs sold annually in China alone, roughly equal to the entire global EV market today.

The implications this can have will definitely affect the global scope:

• Peak oil demand comes sooner (China accounts for 15% of global oil consumption)

• Legacy automakers face extinction if they can’t compete or adapt soon enough

• Battery and battery materials supply chains become the new oil geopolitics

  But How This Happened?

The numbers we just saw didn’t happen by accident. China deployed every policy lever available:

1. Subsidies: China’s government spent ~$21 billion over 13 years on direct purchase subsidies, supporting 3.17 million vehicles. At its peak in 2022, single companies like BYD received over $2 billion in government support.

2. License plate restrictions: In cities like Shanghai and Beijing, getting a conventional fuel car license costs $12,000+ and involves years-long lotteries. EV buyers bypass all of that.

3. Industrial policy: Analysts estimate that China’s EV Industry received at least $230 billion in EV development costs from 2009-2023.

4. Trade-in programs: 2024’s scrappage program offered $2,750 for trading old vehicles for EVs vs. $2,050 for conventional fuel vehicles.

It is no wonder then why this happened. In China, buying an EV became the rational and practical economic choice, not the idealistic one.

Conclusion

China crossed the tipping point in 2024. The question now is how fast the rest of the world follows and whether legacy automakers can adapt before China’s EV giants (BYD, Geely, SAIC, etc.) dominate globally the way they dominate at home.

One thing is certain: the internal combustion engine’s reign in China is over. The only question left is how many years until it’s over everywhere else and can any other country even compete with China?

And just like that Visualytics is back! 🤘⚡ If you made it this far, I want to say a big THANK YOU, it means a lot to have you here after the break. I know I’ve been absent for so long but I’m hoping to get back to it and continue building this data-loving community, one chart at a time.

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📚 SOURCES

1. International Energy Agency (IEA) - Global EV Outlook 2025

2. China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM)

3. US Department of Energy - Vehicle Technologies Office

4. Mordor Intelligence - China Electric Vehicles Market Report