Written by / Zhang Ou
Editor/ Wu Jing
Design / Shi Yuchao
Source/Clean Technica by Assaf Oron
In 2021, what kind of answers will countries around the world give for electrification?
With 6.75 million new electric vehicles and electric vans on the road, accounting for 8.3% of total global vehicle sales, doubling the market share of electric vehicles in 2020 – the electrification revolution is undoubtedly steadily moving in an optimistic direction.
CleanTechnica, a clean energy portal, took stock of the major countries and calculated their scores one by one through eviction market share, reform measures, industry contributions, and more.
Now let's look at the specific rankings.
Scandinavian countries
First, three countries occupy 8th-10th place with a tied 52 points: Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands.
This year's top 10 includes 5 Scandinavian countries, which also happen to be the top 5 in terms of the market share of electric vehicle sales in 2021.
Finland and Denmark almost doubled their share of electric vehicles in 2021, reaching 29.5% and 27% respectively. They also significantly increased the deployment of new electric buses, about 200, respectively, accounting for 50% and 34% of the sector's share.
These two countries have not made a significant contribution to the production of electric vehicles or batteries, but in terms of current electric vehicle penetration, they are still commendable.
Finland also grabbed headlines in late 2021 – proposing incentives for women to buy electric vehicles to reconcile the current imbalanced gender composition of EV owners.
The Netherlands, while successfully in the top ten, is one of the most unstable countries.
The Dutch government has been frantically experimenting with incentives, and repeated policy changes have also made the market more bumpy. In 2021, when subsidies are reduced, the Netherlands will become the slowest market in Western Europe, from only 22% to 25.4%.
Thankfully, it has a solid electric vehicle culture and has one of the most advanced fast-charging networks. In addition, in the field of electric buses, the Netherlands continues to lead the market share (55%), and it also has one of the top two electric bus manufacturers in Europe, VDL.
(Source: Jose Pontes/CleanTechnica.com)
7th place: Attacking United States (54 points)
In 2021, Detroit, with the Mustang Mach-E as its main weapon, made a strong comeback, and plug-in model sales almost doubled from the previous year, reaching 608,000 units, with a market share of 4.1%.
In fact, the U.S. has the lowest share of electric vehicles in the top ten, but thankfully, it has Tesla. As the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer, its brilliant production achievements have prompted the United States to become the world's second largest producer of electric vehicles.
The Model 3 continues to dominate the sales charts, setting records for 4 consecutive years and surpassing 500,000 units for the first time in 2021, most of which come from the Shanghai Gigafactory. The Model Y, which only debuted in 2020, exceeded 400,000 sales in 2021, becoming two golden bricks to help Tesla sit firmly as the leader in the global electric vehicle market.
Traditional automakers Ford and GM, while starting off slower, have each invested billions of dollars and are aggressively catching up. Coupled with the Biden administration's various incentives, it is expected that the electric vehicle revolution in the United States will further show results in the coming years.
6th place: Iceland's ultra-high share (56 points)
Surely someone will say, "Please! The country has a population of less than 400,000. ”
But while the global average share of EV sales is still in the single digits, it's rising from 47 percent to 65 percent, and it's hard not to rank it in the top ten.
Iceland's core task for 2021 is to successfully jump from 8% to 21% in the segment of electric light commercial vehicles – also the highest in the world in this segment.
Fifth place: Germany with well-known old car companies (58 points)
Germany's share of sales almost doubled from the previous year to 24%, so the total sales were ahead of the United States (690,000 units) for another year.
The Volkswagen Group launched more than 750,000 electric vehicles on global roads in 2021, ranking second in the world. Unfortunately, two other top German manufacturers, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, are holding their feet.
In addition, according to an EV Volumes sales report, the two companies in the top 20 electric vehicle manufacturers in the world in 2021 have the slowest growth rates except for the troubled Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance.
It is worth mentioning that in 2021, Germany won the sales champion of another market segment: electric buses, reaching 550 to 600 units, with a share of about 10% in its domestic bus market.
Overall, Germany is entering a full-blown electric vehicle phase and is expected to maintain or even accelerate its pace in 2022.
Electric trucks can pay less tolls▼
(Source: Volvo Trucks)
4th place: Sweden on the resident list (59 points)
In 2021, sweden's share of electric vehicles rose from 30% to 42%.
Although Volvo is still dominated by plug-in hybrids, it has begun a stable transition to pure electric vehicles.
Volvo Buses (the bus-truck division is separate and still owned by Swedes) made a breakthrough in 2021, deploying about 150 heavy-duty all-electric trucks, topping the list in an area that is highly polluting but slow to electrify.
3rd Place: Korea (62 points)
A few years ago, South Korean industries, including automakers and battery makers, saw the megatrend of electric vehicles and immediately began to work hard. To be honest, South Koreans already occupy an unshakable position in the field of electric vehicles.
Sales figures still don't reach European levels, but the share of electric vehicles has jumped from less than 3% in 2020 to 7%, successfully entering the club of 100,000 vehicles sold.
Unlike in Europe, in South Korea, the best-selling electric vehicles in 2021 are actually light trucks. The surge in electric truck sales is clearly driven by strict restrictions and charges on fossil fuel trucks.
Most of the electric vehicles produced by Hyundai-Kia Group will be exported, with a total of more than 300,000 units exported in 2021.
The Hyundai Porter 2 is the best-selling electric car in the Korean market in 2021▼
(Source: Hyundai–Kia)
South Korea can rank third, more than the share of electric vehicles, more thanks to the outstanding industry contribution - electric vehicle batteries. Three South Korean companies (LG, SK and Samsung) contracted more than 30 percent of the world's EV battery capacity sold last year, second only to China.
In Europe, for example, Samsung and SK Innovations' projects in Hungary, as well as LG's projects in Poland, will gradually leave Tesla behind in total production.
Even in the U.S., where Tesla currently dominates, U.S. factory production from two South Korean companies is expected to surpass it in 2024.
In fact, some of Tesla's own production in China also relies on LG batteries.
Finally, South Korea's electric bus market is likely to be the second largest in the world, with 1,275 deployed in 2021 (up from about 1,000 in 2020), almost 40% of the number of electric buses deployed across the continent.
Second place: Norway, only one step away from full coverage (65 points)
In 2021, norway's ev market share is about 75% (up from 63% in 2020). Among them, the market share of passenger cars is as high as 86%, and the helpless light commercial vehicles are only 17%, which lowers the overall average.
Even so, the share of light commercial vehicles is still 2 times the 8.5% in 2020, and has reached 27% so far in 2022, so this gap will not only narrow, but also at a very fast rate.
(Source: elbil.no)
1st Place: China, Riding the Dust (87 points)
3.4 million electric vehicles sold, about half of the global total; the ev vehicle market share is about 15%, up 140% from 2020.
Clean Technica has this to say: The Chinese auto industry knows how to move fast in the right direction, which is unique on the planet.
When Western countries talk about "testing and piloting," retreating before moving forward, and looking for excuses to procrastinate, China has chosen to act decisively.
This has always been the case, with the West taking decades to do it, while China (and sometimes South Korea) has always acted efficiently. The same is true when it comes to lithium battery recycling.
Most Western automakers prefer to try to compete with Tesla in the lucrative upscale market, while Chinese product designers and engineers figure out how to make real electric cars for Volkswagen.
Wuling Hongguang mini electric vehicle sales reached 424,000 units in 2021, leaving the Model 3 (169,000 units) and Model Y (151,000 units) far behind. With such figures, it also managed to win second place in the entire Chinese auto market, behind Nissan Xuanyi.
More broadly, Chinese automakers and auto production workers are massively ramping up electric vehicles by 2021. The top 10 best-selling electric vehicles in the world are all produced in China, either individually or as a major production base.
Electrification of China's auto market is led by local companies, whose share of overall car sales rose from 40 percent to 49 percent last year. With this promotion, Chinese brands have also begun to appear overseas and have won a lot of attention and even vigilance.
In 2021, China exported 500,000 electric vehicles, including all Teslas that reached Europe, as well as Chinese brands such as PoleStar, Lynk & Co and MG MG. So far, China remains the only automotive market in the world where you can find almost all segments.
And compared to batteries, this is nothing.
Batteries are an absolutely necessary factor for electrification. 79% of the world's installed battery capacity is in China, most of which are Chinese brands, such as the world's first Ningde era.
(Source: VCG/globaltimes.cn)
painted eggshell
It is worth mentioning that this time last year, CleanTechnica also ranked the electrification performance of various countries in 2020. At that time, two countries fell behind in the top 10 – France and the United Kingdom. They are ranked 11th and 12th respectively.
The two countries still have a decent development in 2021, with the share of electric vehicles rising by 59% and 76% to 15% and 16%, respectively. But France's Renault has not kept pace with rapid development, while Britain's main car factory is Nissan, whose Leaf has lost its position in the process of transitioning to a low-end market. However, both countries could make a comeback.
Renault ZOE of the Renault Group▼
(Source: renaultgroup.com)
Every story needs a villain, and the villain in this article is undoubtedly Japanese.
Japanese automakers control the world's annual production of 25 million cars and light trucks, far exceeding the automotive industry in any other country. However, how many of them are electric vehicles? It could be 200,000 vehicles, or it could be fewer.
There is another populous country that must be mentioned, as well as the main automobile market - India.
India's electrification road is slower, but it's also different: it's tricycles that take the lead. Officials say 150,000 electric tricycles will be deployed in 2021, and as for the four-wheelers, they are just starting to take off.
This article was originally produced by Automotive Business Review
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