The age of the internal combustion engine (ICE) is drawing to a close as did the age of the horse and buggy before it.

You can see the transformation in this chart from RMI. ICE market share is falling fast while EV share is rising:

What matters here is the shape of the curves. It’s exponential. 

You can see it again in the following chart from the International Energy Agency, the leading international body that tracks and forecasts the energy transition:

And you see it in the sales of batteries, the main component of EVs:

Let’s take a more granular view. Consider EV adoption by countries. In Norway in 2023, EVs comprised 92% of new car sales! And 60% in Sweden.  EV detractors have been telling us EVs don’t work well in cold climates.  Apparently, the Scandinavians, who are famous for their balmy climate, didn’t get the memo.

Of course, Norway and Sweden are small car markets. In the United States, EV sales were growing rapidly until they were been made a culture war issue by the fossil fuel industry and its political allies. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding all the press you’ve heard to the contrary, EV sales in the U.S. are still growing, to now about 10% of total new car sales:

But the big story here is China, the world’s largest automobile market and the world’s largest automobile manufacturer. 38% of new car sales in 2023 were EVs. 

This is an animated chart from Statista that tells the story. Keep your eye on the black China bar as it goes from nowhere to global dominance in just 20 years.

The Chinese are also killing it in battery manufacturing, mineral processing, and refining.

What’s behind this incredible transition, in China and in the rest of the world? A major factor is investment.

In 2022, Reuters estimated that the 37 top global automakers planned to invest $1.2 trillion in EV and battery investments through 2030. In the U.S. alone, between 2000 and September 2024, companies announced $208.8 billion in EV and battery manufacturing, which are estimated to create 240,000 permanent jobs:

Most of that investment came in the last three years and can be attributed to the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Trump has said he wants to repeal. 

Perhaps not by accident, most of these investments have been made in red states:

This investment, of course, means thousands of jobs for U.S. workers, also in red states:

As a result of these massive flows of investment capital, EVs have been getting better and better, and the barriers to EV adoption are dropping rapidly. 

One such barrier has been the sticker price, which is driven mainly by the cost of the batteries. 

Here’s what’s happening with battery prices. Exponential curve, anyone?

As you would expect, this then has driven down the cost of EVs to the critical point where some are reaching cost parity with ICE cars:

Notice that EVs are the only class of cars whose prices are going down. If Trump really wanted to lower the cost of living for Americans, he would be all in on EVs.

At the same time, batteries are getting better and better, which removes another barrier to adoption: range anxiety. You can dig into this chart from the Environmental Protection Agency later, but it shows a strong trend toward more EVs with longer ranges.

And when you need to charge on a road trip, you are more and more likely to find a charging station near you:

The end result of all this investment is faster and better cars, greater convenience, and lower costs.

This little fellow is the Seagull EV from the Chinese automobile manufacturer, BYD, which recently overtook Tesla as the leading global seller of EVs. It has a range of 250 miles and costs, drumroll please, less than $10K. 

It’s not available in the U.S. as far as I know, and certainly not at that price. You have to ask yourself, why not? That’s a great question for our panel, but I’ll venture that one answer is the fossil fuel industry won’t allow it. The driver of that car never goes to the gas station. Never. Is it any wonder the fossil fuel industry is terrified of EVs?

Chinese EV manufacturers now build millions more cars than even the Chinese consumers want, at lower costs, and this is driving an export boom:

And this is why U.S. and the European Union are slapping ever-increasing tariffs on Chinese EVs. They know that, in a free market, their domestic automobile industries would be crushed by Chinese EVs.

And that’s why the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, to give U.S. manufacturers and consumers the time and incentives to catch up with the Chinese.

The Inflation Reduction Act authorized $392.5 billion dollars to accelerate clean energy and EV transition. Why? Because if we don’t get with the program, China is going to leave us in the dust. It’s already happening.

So let’s recap.

The age of the internal combustion engine is drawing to a close. The transition is unstoppable. The only question that remains is: who will be the winners and who will be the losers? 

If Donald Trump has his way, China will be the winner and the United States will be the loser. 

Refusal to accept the reality of this global transition will benefit the U.S. fossil fuel industry in the short term, at the expense of American consumers and the U.S. automobile industry in the long term, and help cement China’s dominance in some of the most important global industries of the future – automobiles, batteries, solar, and wind. 

In short, as Kia Executive Steven Center commented late last year on Trump’s plan to kill the EV Tax Credit, “it would just be dumb.”

At the same time, continued use of gas cars will saddle American consumers with needlessly higher transportation costs when considering the lifetime costs of ownership, as shown in this comparison by Environmental Defense Fund. A Chevy Equinox is 29% less expensive over 10 years than its ICE equivalent, which translates into thousands of dollars in savings.

And continued use of gas cars will subject us all to ongoing environmental degradation and air pollution. 

According to a report from UC Berkeley, a future in which 100% of new U.S. cars are EVs by 2030 would avoid 150,000 premature deaths resulting from air pollution through 2050:

In a nutshell, if Trump has his way, China will win and the United States will lose, with serious consequences for our cost of living, our health, our environment, and our national security.

We don’t have to stand by passively while this happens. We can all take action today and in the coming days to pressure the Trump Administration, our elected officials, and business leaders to stop this misguided assault on EVs and clean energy.

Remember, public opinion is the only effective counterweight to the immense power of the fossil fuel industry. Your opinion is your superpower.

If enough of us raise our voices in support of the EV tax credits and Inflation Reduction Act, the Trump Administration may — just may — see the wisdom of keeping the United States a player in the EV and clean energy transition. 

If not, future Americans will remember this as a historic and tragic miscalculation that consigned yet another once-dominant U.S. industry to global irrelevance.