The EV Revolution hasn’t affected the Big Oil Much

With the global energy transformation well underway, few clean energy industries, if any, are growing at a greater rate than the electric vehicle industry. A decade ago, a total of 130,000 electric vehicles were sold worldwide; today, approximately the same number are sold in less than a week.

To use a cliché, the EV industry has been playing chess while the rest of the world plays checkers, with combined sales of battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles more than doubling to about 6.6 million vehicles last year.

According to a new International Energy Agency data, electric vehicle sales made for 8.6% of the worldwide light-duty vehicle market in 2018, up from just 2.5 percent in 2019. Despite the fact that Tesla remains the world’s leading electric vehicle manufacturer, with a 14.2% global market share and a whopping 65.8% in the United States, the rest of the pack is swiftly catching up. Tesla’s share of U.S. EV sales is expected to shrink from 78 percent in 2018 to roughly 20 percent in 2024, according to Bank of America, while IHS Market expects Tesla to have fewer than 15 percent of U.S. sales by 2027.

However, that enormous loss in market share will not be due to any failure on Tesla’s part—the firm is predicted to grow strongly this year—but rather to the EV universe’s spectacular growth, with 146 models expected to be available in the United States in 2025, compared to just 24 in 2020. Oil and gas investors, understandably, are wary of the recent revelation, given that electric vehicles are widely regarded as the sector’s arch-enemy. According to the most recent EV study, the transition from ICEs to is moving at a faster-than-expected rate, possibly due to a rush of ICE heavyweights jumping into the EV race.