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It’s that time again, when analysts and industry watchers make predictions about what’s in store for the year ahead. Each year presents new variables, and this year is no different with lots of mixed signals in the electric vehicle market.

Established automakers are cutting EV production targets and downplaying interest in the technology, while pure-play EV manufacturers plow ahead with expansion plans, launch new models and take an ever-growing share of the global car market. Policy is a big variable this year, with an important US election looming, tax changes in China and a strong push in Europe and the US for localized production of batteries and EVs.

Here’s what our team at BloombergNEF is expecting on EV sales around the world in 2024, pulled from a full report that BNEF and Bloomberg Terminal clients can find here.

We expect global passenger EV sales — battery-electrics and plug-in hybrids — to increase 21% in 2024 to 16.7 million, with 70% of those being fully electric.

EV sales in China should come in just under 10 million, representing almost six of every ten EVs sold globally. Still, the growth rate in China is slowing due to market saturation in the wealthier regions and tougher economic conditions overall.

The EV share of global vehicle sales should come in around 20% (pure-electric: 14%), up from about 17% in 2023. In China, we expect the EV share to reach 38% of sales.

Sales in Europe will be relatively flat this year as automakers there hold back on higher volumes before CO2 regulations tighten again in 2025. Subsidies also have been cut in some important regions, and the European market is increasingly dependent on favorable company-car taxation schemes for EVs. European EV sales should be around 3.4 million for the year, up 8%.

The US market is the toughest to call. Ford and General Motors have been among the most vocal in saying that demand for EVs is faltering, but Tesla keeps scoring wins and other automakers like Hyundai and Kia aren’t slowing down. Accessing Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) tax credits gets more difficult this year, but those buying models that qualify will get the credit at the point of sale.

EV sales in the US should be just under 1.9 million, accounting for 13% of new-car purchases, but there could be some surprises to the downside as the political polarization ramps up this year. What happens in the US will shape a lot of the EV coverage and headlines in 2024, but it’s far from the most important market and will account for only about 11% of global EV sales. It’s best not to overinterpret what happens there.

Emerging economies will be fascinating to watch this year. Places like India, Thailand and Indonesia all saw EV volumes shoot up in 2023. We expect EV sales in our Rest of World category to hit 840,000, dispelling any misconception that EVs are only a rich-world phenomenon. Later in 2024, BYD aims to start up a reopened plant in Brazil, after Ford pulled out of the country in 2021.

That timeline may be ambitious, but a Chinese automaker setting up shop there while a Western one retreats highlights a changing of the guard in the global auto market. BYD has the right portfolio of affordable EV options for emerging economies. Its rise to global automotive powerhouse will continue this year, and established automakers have no real answer.

Commercial EV sales also are set for another breakout year. After exceeding 500,00 in 2023, we expect deliveries to roughly double to 1 million in 2024. Commercial vehicles are used intensively and contribute disproportionally to both fuel use and emissions. The peak for global road fuel use is still several years away in BNEF’s models, but it’s inching closer.

The slowdown in the global EV sales growth rate — from 33% in 2023 to 21% in 2024 — is concerning for those making large investments, but battery tech continues to get better, costs continue to come down, and there are now 4 million public charging points installed around the world. All of those trends will continue this year, paving the way for further growth in 2025 and 2026, when a slew of cheaper models is set to hit Western markets.

With all that prognosticating, it’s worth doing a quick review of year-ago predictionsto see how we at BNEF fared. In January 2023, we forecast that EV sales would come in at 14 million. We’re still tallying final data, but it looks like that’s almost exactly where the industry will land for the year.

We also predicted that BYD would edge out Tesla as the new biggest producer of battery-electric vehicles in the final months of the year, which happened, and that Tesla’s Model Y would be one the three best-selling vehicles in the world.

We expected that the number of public charging points would hit 4.1 million (the final number will be just under 4 million), that IRA-linked new investment announcements in EVs and the supply chain in North America would total $80 billion, and that there would be a wave of bankruptcies and consolation for EV charging and startup EV automakers. All of those came out looking very accurate. The final data isn’t in yet on the best-seller for the year, but Tesla likely claimed the top spot.

Our biggest notable miss last year was on battery prices, which we thought would remain elevated in 2023. Instead, prices dropped 14% due to plummeting costs of raw materials, overcapacity, and intense competition among manufacturers.

Before You Go

The fight for EV sales leadership will be a two-company race for at least the next few years, with Tesla and BYD remaining well ahead of Volkswagen, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. While Tesla fell behind BYD in fourth quarter sales of battery-electric vehicles, BI expects the US company to stay ahead on an annual basis through the end of the decade. VW is “no longer a contender” for the EV crown, analysts led by Michael Dean said, though they expect internal combustion engine models to keep dominating industrywide earnings. BI’s view of VW’s positioning in EVs has deteriorated substantially in the last year and a half. In June 2022, Dean predicted the German manufacturer would pull ahead of Tesla in 2024.