China also supreme here
It is and remains the big question that hangs over the market when it comes to electric cars: will it remain with rich, Western countries, or will the rest also join in? A new study points to the latter.
‘Emerging markets in Asia and Latin America are becoming the new epicenter of growth’, states the Global EV Outlook 2025. In that report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports extensively on the global sales of electric cars in 2024, noting that PHEVs are also included under ‘electric cars’. Earlier, we looked at the major players in the global EV market and China’s hegemony when it comes to EV production, today we peek with IEA at the emerging markets. According to this report, there is a serious shift going on there.
In Southeast Asia and South America, rechargeable car sales grew by 60 percent. In total, almost 600,000 ‘electric’ or electric cars were sold in these regions in 2024, with the IEA noting that this is about the same as the entire European EV market five years ago. Compared to the surface area and population of the regions mentioned, there is still a long way to go, but the growth percentage is indeed impressive. In Southeast Asia, the electric car (including PHEV) would now account for 9 percent of total car sales in the region, with Thailand and Vietnam being the frontrunners. In Brazil, rechargeable cars accounted for 125,000 registrations in 2024, which translates to a market share of more than 6 percent.
In Africa, sales of rechargeable cars doubled, mainly due to the contribution of Egypt and Morocco. Even so, cars supplied with a charging cable still only account for a market share of 1 percent here, so Africa does indeed fit the image that little is happening outside the West in the field of electrification.
China
Striking once again is the supremacy of China, which is even clearer in emerging markets than in the rich, spoiled West. Because China can generally market its EVs more cheaply, Chinese cars account for 75 percent of electric sales in emerging markets outside of China itself. This growth percentage, together with the growth of EVs themselves, does give food for thought about the future of car land, where China’s influence will almost certainly become enormous.
Photo above: the BYD Song Plus (Seal U, but pre-facelift) was the most popular plug-in car in Brazil in 2024. Source: CleanTechnica