Snapshot: America’s EV market ahead of Trump overhaul
New details emerged this week about plans by the incoming Trump administration to overhaul government support for the US electric car market and EV battery supply chain.
“The transition-team plan would redirect money now flowing to building charging stations and making EVs affordable into national-defense priorities, including securing China-free supplies of batteries and the critical minerals to build them,” according to a document seen by Reuters.
The new Trump strategy, which inevitably also comes with a heavy dose of tariffs on friend and foe, appears to be broadly in line with the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act to promote onshoring and a US–Sino decoupling from mine to megawatt – a now a well-established long-term goal for Washington.
Retail therapy
However, the scrapping of incentives at the retail level, which currently top out at a generous $7,500 per vehicle, and leaving the buildout of charging infrastructure (a common concern of those looking to switch to EVs) entirely to the private sector, will have an effect on how the rubber hits the road.
On top of that, the likely pushing out of emissions targets by Trump 2.0 would provide another reason for automakers operating in the US to cut back or delay investment in sorely needed new EV model rollouts, worsening a trend already firmly in place.
The changes to the EV landscape come at a time when adoption has already slowed down in the US, albeit by not nearly as much as news headlines may suggest.
Just over 2.5 million passenger EVs of all types were sold in the US over the first 10 months of 2024, a 19% jump over the same period last year.
However, with nearly half of US EV buyers opting for traditional hybrids this year, the country’s year over year growth is less robust when considering total battery capacity deployment (i.e., GWh deployed), which provides a clearer picture of the electrification of the country’s vehicle parc than unit sales alone.
The Adamas Intelligence EV Battery Intel Platform shows that US-based buyers of new EVs rolled 94.3 GWh of fresh power hours onto the country’s roads from January through October, up 14% year on year.
Chinese gap
Not only is China’s market four times the size of the US at 382.0 GWh year to date, but the world’s leading EV market also grew at a much faster clip of 36% over the same period.
And growth in China is only accelerating. In September and October alone, total battery capacity deployment onto China’s roads exceeded that of the US through the first 10 months of the year despite BEVs and PHEVs already constituting 37% of the overall EV unit market in China.
And while the globe’s number three EV market, Germany, is clearly in a slump with 17% fewer GWh hitting autobahns this year than last year, EV penetration rates in the nation are still double that of the US.
Despite the long shadow Germany casts on the European market, several smaller nations in the bloc, such as Belgium and Denmark, have managed to up battery capacity deployment by 28% and 44% respectively so far this year.
Looking north
The US underperformance in 2024 is starkly visible when comparing EV markets with its neighbor to the North.
Historically, Canada’s auto industry has been in lockstep with that of the US as vehicle buyers in both nations face similar hurdles to adoption – cold winters, vast driving distances, lack of charging infrastructure and a dearth of model options.
Nevertheless, through the first 10 months of 2024, battery capacity deployment onto Canadian roads increased by 40% compared to the same period last year.
At the same time Canada’s penetration rate improved a couple of percentage points with BEVs and PHEVs now representing 13% of overall vehicles sales. The same figure in the US is still in single digits and is flat year on year.
