Electric Vehicles

With gas prices high, people in developing countries are racing to buy battery-powered bikes. The Iran war has made Trump “salesman of the year,” one executive in Pakistan said.

According to a study by analytics firm Mobility Global, the global price average of EVs is now significantly lower than that of hybrids, Nikkei Asia reports. EV prices average around $37,000, which is 9% lower than in 2020, while hybrid average prices rose 16% over that time period to an average of $39,000. These figures were computed by accounting for sticker prices without subsidies and also based on sales volume.

French carmaker Renault no longer sells its brand in the Chinese market, but it's not afraid to design and develop them there. It's just one more sign of big shifts in the global auto industry.

The share of electric cars sold by Chinese brands rose to 14.2% across western European markets – or one in every seven battery electric vehicles (BEVs) – in the first five months of this year, according to Schmidt Automotive Research. The 171,800 sales represented an increase in market share of nearly five percentage points versus the same period in 2025.

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The new research finds that in order to repay the carbon debt of making a new EV, it must be driven 4,400 miles if it’s a car and 6,700 miles each year if it’s a truck. That’s already well below the 12,500 miles the average driver travels in a year, and the benefits to making the switch are likely to grow. 

As the United States increasingly relies on renewables, for example, charging an EV becomes even more environmentally appealing. Campbell and his co-author also point to improvements in battery recycling as a way of reducing the emissions involved with making an electric car. 

One hole in this latest study is that it doesn’t consider the cost of going electric. While previous research has shown that EVs come with higher upfront costs but lower operating expenses, it’s a thread that Campbell hopes economists pull on. He would also like to see someone better account for the emissions generated while extracting oil and getting gasoline to the pump, rather than simply the burning. But, for now, he believes the study sends a clear message.

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