Around 42 percent of upcoming EV sales will be in China, 26 percent will be in Europe and 25 percent will be in North America. If Tesla Model 3 sales continue to accelerate, North America could catch up with Europe “quite quickly,” Bloomberg NEF states. But there’s no guarantee of that happening.

Tesla has been grappling with Model 3 delays, quality concerns and executive churn, as well as a recently abandoned privatization effort. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said last week that going private would be “more time-consuming and distracting than initially anticipated,” at a time when the company urgently needs to ramp its Model 3 production and achieve profitability.

In the second quarter of 2018, EVs as a share of new car sales stood at 4 percent, 2.3 percent and 1.6 percent in China, Europe and North America, respectively. Japan, meanwhile, has seen EV sales slump in recent years.

Several new EV models are slated to come to market before the end of 2018, which should boost global EV purchases. Bloomberg expects the Tesla Model 3 will arrive in Europe in mid-2019, which will likely increase EV sales in the region further.

In China, subsidies have played a key role in driving EV sales. The government expects China’s annual new energy vehicle (NEV) output to hit 2 million in 2020, and for NEV sales to make up 20 percent of the overall auto market by 2025, Xinhua reports.

Source: greentechmedia