In 2012, only 120,000 electric vehicles were sold worldwide. A decade later, in 2022, sales of electric vehicles reached 10 million, an increase of 55 percent from the previous year. At the start of 2023, approximately 26 million electric vehicles were on the road.

The rapid rise of the EV has been driven by several factors. Over the past decade, as the threat of climate change has become increasingly urgent, countries around the world have adopted aggressive targets for decarbonization. The U.K. government has announced plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Similarly, the European Union has approved a law to ban the sale of new diesel and gasoline cars by 2035, only five years later, and Canada has already adopted legislation to prohibit the sale of new gas cars and light-duty trucks, also by 2035.

To accelerate this shift, governments around the world have implemented massive subsidies and incentives to encourage EV adoption. For example, the p