Trump’s misfire: The electric car takeover is now unstoppable

The world market for electric vehicles is moving into the parabolic phase of the technology S-curve, the critical stage where disruption moves with lightning speed and the mathematical compound effect demolishes the old order.

“Once you reach 5 per cent or 10 per cent, it takes off. The next stop is 30 per cent and suddenly you are on the way to 80 per cent,” said Kingsmill Bond, energy director at Ember and the man who coined the term “electrotech”.

New energy vehicles in China – EVs and plug-in hybrids – captured a record 61.4 per cent of total sales in April even though they are no longer exempt from purchase tax.

Sales of petrol and diesel cars crashed by 37 per cent from a year earlier, early evidence of the fallout from the US-Israeli war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

We are all used to eye-watering figures from China by now. The more striking story is what is happening in the rest of the world, off the radar screen of American and European media.

Sales of EVs surpassed 63 per cent of the overall car market in Singapore last year, up from 3 per cent in 2020. The early evidence for April and May suggests the figure may already be near two-thirds.

This is worth watching because the flourishing city-state is a bellwether of global positioning, a litmus test of whether the non-aligned world is pivoting towards Chinese electrotech or sticking with America’s fossil fuel regime.

The core message of the International Energy Agency’s new report on the global EV industry is that the switch accelerated last year – despite the idiosyncratic counter-trend story in the US – and spread fastest in emerging markets.

Sales doubled across South-east Asia in 2025. The region is fast becoming a Chinese EV sphere – or in the case of Vietnam, is developing its own copycat patriotic version, with two-fifths EV penetration spearheaded by VinFast, a Vietnamese automotive manufacturer.

South Korea jumped 65 per cent. Latin America has belatedly joined the rush with 75 per cent growth last year, led by Brazil and Mexico.

This shift to EVs no longer has anything to do with climate policy, though it is driven in part by the quest for cleaner air in the unbreathable smog-cursed cities of the Global South.

Last year’s surge was driven chiefly by market forces. The IEA said 70 per cent of battery EVs sold in China in 2025 were already cheaper than petrol and diesel cars on purchase cost alone, even before lifecycle savings on fuel.

It is a near-total wipeout in the Chinese market for small cars. The newer, cheaper EVs are now reaching the world market, either as direct exports or manufactured by Chinese-owned plants at regional hubs in Thailand, Brazil or Hungary.

Active intervention is required to slow the process, as the US is now doing in one of the most extraordinary efforts to turn back the technology clock in global economic history.

MAGA America has made a political choice to block EV penetration at the 10 per cent threshold, both by imposing a prohibitive tariff on imports and by finding all kinds of ways to throw sand into the gears.

It is a strangely defeatist retreat, since the US once led the world with Tesla and is still the leader in the future technology of solid-state batteries.

It could ultimately beat China at its own EV game with a manufacturing Manhattan Project – which Joe Biden was trying to do (clumsily) with the now gutted Inflation Reduction Act – but to capitalise on that, it needs an EV industry at scale and a flourishing ecosystem of EV suppliers.

It is not widely understood, but world demand for oil in transport peaked in 2019 and is already in absolute decline. The war in the Gulf is now hastening the process. It is hard to conclude that Donald Trump’s “excursion” is anything other than an utter disaster for the long-term interests of OPEC, Russia and shale frackers in Texas.

“This is the first time we’ve ever had an oil crisis when there is an alternative on hand and it is easily available,” said Bond.

“Battery costs are plummeting and everything is coming together. The whole of Asia is now electrifying and that is the soft underbelly of the global fossil system.”

There is no return to the status quo ante. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have acquired de facto taxing powers and political control over ships leaving the Persian Gulf, even if this is dressed up as an “environmental protection fee” – a gem of Iranian humour.

Such an arrangement is poison for security of supply and the credibility of the oil and gas industry. Seaborne shipments of energy – or indeed any commodity – are no longer safe in the “new joule order” where the US Navy can no longer be relied on to uphold free navigation and has instead joined the pirates.

Four-fifths of the world’s population live in oil-importing countries. For them it is now an urgent economic and national security imperative to break the dependency once and for all.

EV sales in Europe have been held back by the foot-dragging of the big car companies and their focus on bourgeois models with a fatter profit margin. A whole range of workaday cars in the €17,000 ($27,700) to €25,000 range are finally hitting the market: the Dacia Spring, Citroen e-C3, Renault Twingo E-Tech and the VW ID.2.

The chaos of the charging system is diminishing. All new chargers installed in the European Union since 2024 must accept regular debit cards. Drivers will soon no longer have to contend with a plethora of separate apps and company payment cards.

The latest data from trade association E-Mobility Europe shows that EV sales jumped 34 per cent in April from a year earlier.

The take-off effect that began in Norway – with state help – is spreading to Denmark (82 per cent), Finland (49 per cent), Sweden (41 per cent), the Netherlands (37 per cent), Belgium (36 per cent), Germany and France (26 per cent).

Four-fifths of the world’s population live in oil-importing countries. For them it is now an urgent economic and national security imperative to break the dependency once and for all.

Italy has been a laggard but is finally starting to catch up, with a 97 per cent jump in EV registrations this year, despite electricity prices even higher than in Britain.

Widely repeated claims that consumers don’t want to buy EVs will one day be studied by social historians as a form of collective false consciousness, a distortion created by the culture war and fed by large doses of black propaganda from Russian bots and Western vested interests.

A temporary slowdown in the rate of global EV growth morphed into media headlines of a sales “collapse”. Too much attention was paid to America and not enough attention to Asia or the world. Little of it was ever really true.

We can now conclude with near absolute certainty that the electrification of transport is unstoppable and will happen even faster than earlier expected. The S-curve is alive and well.

Telegraph, London

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